Tengu (24 page)

Hatsue felt a number of things: the sickening internal plunge of hopes dashed, bewilderment, and above all, anger. What had her family been thinking, to make this old man responsible for her release? She wanted to scream, to beat her fists against him in frustration. She looked at the man, sitting as rigidly as he could, yet unaware that he was in fact swaying and trembling slightly.

Hatsue swallowed her first impulsive words. She saw Yamashita peering about in the gloom and licking his lips. She got up and brought him the water jug they provided her with. He took it in both hands and bowed slightly, then drank for a while. She said nothing.

“Please excuse me,” he said, wiping his mouth. His lips were wet from drinking. Hatsue wanted to laugh at the incongruous formality of such a statement. Instead, she drew once again from the strength of her ancestry and calmed herself, knowing that on the other side of that laughter lay madness.
Funny
, she thought to herself,
I have always scoffed at the old ways and now I find they are
what keep me sane
.

The man gathered himself. “I am Yamashita Rinsuke,
sensei
of the Yamashita-ha Itto Ryu. I worked with your Uncle Mori in the Kunaicho. Do you know what that is?” Hatsue nodded silently. Her family spoke little of her Uncle Mori and his activities on behalf of the Imperial family. But they spoke enough for her to know what this entailed.

Yamashita sipped more slowly at the water. “I am not without experience in matters of this sort. Your uncle sought your safe return and a trusted assistant to help him. I came, but . . . ” He bowed formally to her. “I have failed you and your family. This matter was more complex than I imagined.” His head turned slowly to face toward the hut of their captor, as if he could see through the walls.

“That’s it?” she blurted out in protest. “You’ve failed? That’s all? There’s got to be more,” she insisted. “What’s the next step? The backup plan.” Her words lashed into Yamashita, her empathy smothered in frustration.

He closed his eyes and he swayed slightly. She could hear his breath being forced in and out in an odd, deep rhythm. He held up a hand. “I do not know. When I was taken . . . I was drugged. I cannot know for sure what your uncle is doing now.”

Hatsue moved closer to him to follow-up, but a motion at the barred door caught her attention. The guards brought the evening meal, a slop of rice and vegetables in a pail, accompanied by an old bleach bottle filled with water. The guards opened the door, one man shoving the food in and another standing vigil with a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
The weapon is new
, she noted.
Perhaps there is
more to this man than I thought
.

When they left, she offered Yamashita some food. “You should eat,” she told him.

He shook his head. “
Ie
,” No. “Water is what I need. The drugs are still with me . . . . ” She gave him the new water jug and he sipped at it as they continued their conversation.

“I am sorry, Hatsue-san. The man who met me . . . the
Nihonjin
. Do you know him?”

She shook her head in confusion. The
Nihonjin
—the horrible old Japanese man. She tried not to think about him at all. It was a protective response to his energy.

“I know him,” Yamashita told her. “When he first came down the steps of the hut, I thought that perhaps the drugs were making me dream . . . ” He smiled tightly as he moved his shoulders. Hatsue could tell that the motion pained him. “My body tells me that this is no dream.”

Her voice almost failed her. She had lain awake in this dark cage for so long, trying to discern a reason for her kidnapping, to impose some rational pattern on events. “Who is he?” she croaked.

“He wields the
tessen
,” Yamashita answered. “The iron war fan of the old lords. He, too, is a
sensei
.” The Japanese word for teacher could refer to many things and Yamashita saw her perplexed look. “He is a master of the
bugei
,” he explained.

“The martial arts?” she asked disbelievingly. Here in the mountains of Mindanao, fighting was done with assault rifles and high explosives. The old fighting systems of Japan had always seemed anachronisms to her; more so now. “What can this have to do . . . ”

For the first time since bowing, Yamashita moved from his sitting posture. He reached out and laid a hand on her arm. “He is highly skilled in his art and men, certain men, seek his tutelage.” He gazed off into a corner of the room, gripped in the power of personal memory. Once again, he straightened himself with a conscious effort. “I thought that he was diverted from his path but now I fear he trains others.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Hatred has many reasons. Some we can understand. Others . . . ” He closed his eyes briefly.

Hatsue sat near Yamashita, watching him. His breathing was deep and forced, his stomach expanding and contracting with effort. She knew that some martial artists stressed the role of
kokyu
, or breath, in training. She felt sure that Yamashita was engaged in such an exercise, probably related to throwing off the last effects of the drugs. She was confused. The
bugei
. Two
sensei
amidst an armed camp of Islamic insurgents. The old ways embedded in the jumble of a modern struggle.

“Why?” she asked again.

Yamashita spoke slowly, his eyes still closed, an oracle seeing shapes in the dark. “Hatred can warp the best of men. It creates an insatiable hunger. They struggle to master techniques that will feed this hunger. They seek . . . control . . . and dominance.” His eyes flickered open and regarded Hatsue in the gloom. “They crave possession. To take from us the things that we value . . . ”

“Why?” she whispered, almost afraid to hear the answer.

Yamashita took a deep, sighing breath. “It would take great wisdom to know that. We are left only to know what is the outcome. A person such as this . . . is incomplete. He has no
kokoro
.”

She nodded in understanding.
Kokoro
meant heart, or essence. When she had first looked into the eyes of the old man with the war fan, they seemed to her to open onto a vast, dark, and empty space.

Yamashita saw the knowledge reflected in her face. He continued. “And his life is spent taking from others what he himself cannot have. He struggles to capture something that always eludes him. And so his actions become more savage as time goes on. He seeks now not only to possess, but to inflict pain in the process.”

The
sensei
sat quietly for a time. He was still shaky, and the act of explanation seemed to drain him. Hatsue said nothing. Outside the cell, distant voices could be heard as the camp prepared for nightfall. The room they sat in grew dark. Around the camp, small fires glowed bright against the darkened tree line, their embers like the eyes of hungry animals. Finally, Yamashita stirred. Light played on the wet surface of his eyes.

“You ask why he brought you here,” he told her. “He brought you here . . . to lure me closer.” Yamashita sighed sadly. “You have suffered for this, and I am sorry. He has taken much from you. Your freedom and . . . more, I sense?”

Hatsue looked down in shame, the darkness hiding the tears that slipped from her eyes. She felt his broad hand reach out and rest on her arm. It was rough feeling and hot to the touch. She flinched, but Yamashita did not break the contact. His hand stayed there while he spoke.

“He will work to take whatever we have, whatever we value.” His voice was quiet, and oddly soothing, despite the despairing message. “Slowly, one by one, these things will be stripped from us. I see it now . . . ”

“What do we do?” she pleaded in a rasping whisper.

“We must . . . surrender these things. Surely. We are in his control. But at each step, we retreat farther and farther back. Into the core that he cannot touch . . . the
kokoro
.”

“I don’t understand,” she admitted tearfully.

For the first time, she heard an indulgent smile in his voice. “I have a student who tells me that often.” Again, a sigh. “No matter, I will teach you.”

“Teach me what?” Hatsue pleaded.

“Do you know
keiko
?” he asked, avoiding her question. “The word for training in the martial arts? It literally means to reflect on the ways of old.” Yamashita felt her stir with impatience, and his hand pressed down on her even more firmly. “There is much there to learn. True lessons. Important lessons.”

Then he sagged slightly, clearly exhausted. Hatsue made a space for him and Yamashita lay down. After a time, his breathing deepened even further. In the dark, Hatsue could hear the rustle of his clothing as Yamashita’s body jerked spasmodically from the aftereffects of the drugs and the beating.

She lay down as well, eyes wide, listening to the night. Men’s voices, faint and faraway, sounded from the camp. Insects whirred. From deep in the jungle, an animal howled—fury? fear?—it was difficult to tell. The sound made her shiver and she held herself tightly, no longer alone, but bereft of comfort.

20
PALADIN

If they were dogs, the hair on the back of their necks would have been standing up. As it was, I think I saw some fangs showing. Ueda and Reyes looked at each other, faces immobile and eyes threatening.

I got them together in an upscale restaurant on Roxas Boulevard that had a great view of the long line of Manila Bay. It came highly recommended by the hotel and I figured there’d be less chance of them throwing things at each other in a public place. We sat at a large round table, tucked away in the far corner of the room, away from the windows. The hotel concierge would have been disappointed in me. The table had a nice, crisply pressed linen tablecloth, and glassware sat, sparkling and ready for use. The cutlery was a standard setting and I was relieved there were no really pointy knives available.

I sat between the two men. Micky and Art watched carefully as I continued talking. I tried to project a calm I didn’t really feel— time was slipping away. But I needed these two men to help me, so I smoothed out the tension in my voice.

“What’s done is done,” I told them. “What I want you both to focus on now is the best way to resolve this situation . . . .
Please
.”

“This is unbelievable,” Reyes growled. The Inspector had learned a little more about Ueda’s activities with Marangan. He welcomed the intelligence, but the idea that the man from the Japanese Embassy had crossed some fairly clear legal lines continued to outrage him. Ueda sat stone-faced. In some ways I could sympathize with him: like any good samurai, he’d done his master’s bidding. But he wasn’t a samurai; he was a government official living in the twenty-first century. He knew what he’d done. Both men came from cultures where dignity was prized and an affront of public standing was intolerable. For Reyes, his sense of
hiya
, the Filipino equivalent of face, had been violated. And Ueda had done the violating. But he wasn’t about to admit to anything: getting caught was humiliation enough.

I held up my hand to try to bottle up Reyes. “I’m not excusing it. It’s just the way it is.” A waiter saw the movement and began to move hopefully toward us. I shook my head, no.

“I will ensure that an official protest is made at the highest level,” Reyes continued, but Art cut him off.

“Reyes, you’ve got to let it go for now,” Art said. “It’s not helping and the clock’s ticking.”

“Once we get Yamashita and the girl, you can sputter all you want,” my brother added. He looked balefully at Ueda. The memory of last night still haunted Micky as well.

The cultural attaché looked back at my brother. “And what . . . inducement is there for me to cooperate, Detective?”

“Look,” I said, breaking in, “we’re here to get the victims back, right? Both of them, right?”

Ueda nodded slowly as if admitting a minor point. You could see him thinking. “That is a consideration, yes.”

“The Abe family is not going to like losing their two million dollars,” Art reminded him.

“Tokyo’s got to want you to get the people responsible for killing Mori,” I said. It was a carefully crafted statement. Ueda and Marangan had already found the man who pulled the trigger. That wasn’t the essential point. “The real people behind all this,” I added pointedly. The attaché looked at me carefully. His hands had been resting on the tabletop, palms down and fingers lightly touching. As I said this, one hand began to move slightly, as if Ueda were trying to sense the texture of the table beneath the cloth, to feel the subtle reality that was being masked.

My brother sat up a little straighter. “We want to get to the bottom of this, just like you do, Ueda,” he said. The attaché remained silent, so Micky gestured at Reyes. “Am I right?” The Filipino nodded slightly, but didn’t seem too encouraging.

“It’s in all our best interests,” Art said soothingly. “I’m sure that your people,” he was looking at Ueda, “want whoever’s behind this. So does the Philippine government. And we can probably all agree that it should be done with a minimum of fuss and publicity, right, Inspector? We get the kidnap victims back, we get the terrorists. There’s no mention of . . . anything else,” he paused for a minute, trying to figure out how to put it, then gave up. “The bottom line is that the Manila cops get the credit for busting this thing right open. Okay?” Reyes closed his eyes and acquiesced.

Ueda’s eyes were focused on the table in front of him as he prepared to speak. He didn’t look at any of us. For the Japanese, the most important things are often said when they’re not looking directly at you. Ueda was a long way from the Old Country, but some cultural habits are deeply ingrained.

“In a hypothetical situation,” he began, “if I were able to be of some service in this search, what could I expect . . . ”

“In return?” I finished the question for him and went on. “Your chances are much better of finding whoever’s behind this by working with the police than without them. Which would mean the mess that Mori made could possibly be cleaned up. Which could be very good for you.”

“Of course,” Micky said, “you could always decide not to cooperate. But that would be messy.”