Linnear 01 - The Ninja (28 page)

She heard Pear’s exasperated sigh on the other end of the line. ‘Darling, need I remind you again that it was you who sought me out? Yes, I provide your clientele, but they’re a very special breed, you don’t need me to tell you that. One thousand dollars a night is nothing to look down your nose at. You could perhaps make more by the hour but what’s the point, darling? That won’t make you happy and this does. But I can hardly say that you are one of my girls. My God, what a difference! People ask for you, my darling. That’s the difference.’

‘Do you have something for me?’ Gelda asked woodenly.

Pear sighed again, giving up for the moment. ‘Yes. Dare. The actress. You remember -‘

‘I remember.’

‘She only wanted you.’

‘All right.’

‘Do you have everything you need?’ Pear inquired.

Gelda thought for a minute. ‘The chaps were just cleaned but the silk -‘

‘I’ll have Lawless come by with it this afternoon. Anything else?’

Gelda was thinking about the enormous Remington Navy six-shooter with the long octagonal barrel and the polished hardwood stock under her expert guidance. It wasn’t called a six-shooter for nothing. ‘Yes,’ she said dreamily, ‘a half pound of lox and four bagels.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Pear, be sure you tell him no onions; not when I’m working.’

Pear laughed in her ear. ‘That’s more like it. You know tonight’s going to be more pleasure than business.’

There was that to look forward to at least. She turned to look out of the window at the bright brittle sunshine. The phone slid from her grip. The river of salt winked at her, dazzling.

The room itself was constructed entirely of wood. Only wooden pegs and glue had been used in the laying of the boards, shiny with clear lacquer.

It was a rectangle, wider than it was deep, with a high ceiling. The light was soft and well defined in every corner of the room.

It had the look of a gymnasium save for the raised dais with its low wooden railing that ran across the width at the rear of the room. Otherwise it was devoid of furniture or other accoutrements.

There were a dozen men in white cotton leggings and shirts, lined up six against six opposite each other. Each held a polished wooden stick, round with a shallow hilt guard. Croaker would have thought of them as swords had it not been for a total lack of cutting edge or sharp point. The men were maskless. All were Japanese. Most were in their early or middle twenties though he saw one teenager and two who were obviously nearer forty.

A man dressed in grey stood between these two groups, near the stairs leading up to the low dais. He was small in stature. He was hairless, making a judgement of his age somewhat more difficult. Croaker put it somewhere between forty and fifty. The man gave a piercing cry and the two lines advanced two quick steps, engaging each other in what looked to him like ritualized combat using the wooden sticks.

‘This is a kenjutsu class, Lieutenant,’ Nicholas said. “The finest in the Western Hemisphere and parts of the East as well.’ Croaker watched, fascinated, as the men advanced and retreated, attacked and parried, crying out in unison. But it all seemed so slow and methodical that he could not see how any of it could be at all useful in a fight.

In moments there came a soft bell tone and, at a sharp command from the sensei, the men stepped back and, lifting their swords in unison, bowed deeply to each other. Then they wheeled and broke up into quiet groups. Some walked to the sides of the dojo and sat on their thighs, others bent and stretched where they were. All seemed totally involved in these minute actions. /

Nicholas took Croaker across the polished floor to where the kenjutsu master stood. He bowed and said some things, in Japanese, to the small man, who bowed again and extended his hand towards Croaker.

Uncertain, Croaker took it. It was as hard as a block of concrete. The man smiled.

“This is Fukashigi,’ Nicholas told Croaker. ‘Consider yourself introduced.’

Croaker let go the man’s hand, said, ‘What happens now?’ ‘Watch,’ Nicholas said.

Fukashigi looked off to his left, spoke in rapid Japanese. A student uncoiled himself and, first pausing to pick up another wooden sword, came quietly over. He bowed to Nicholas, handed him one of the weapons. Fukashigi spoke to him for a short time and at the end his head bobbed once. ‘Hail’ he said in assent.

The student was tall and lanky, with a hard face and quick, intelligent eyes. Both he and Nicholas adopted an opening attitude, feet as far apart as the width of their shoulders, knees slightly bent, both hands on the hilts of their wooden swords.

‘Now,’ Nicholas said to Croaker, not taking his eyes from the student, ‘there are five attitudes in kendo and only five: upper, middle, lower, right side, left side. The first three are decisive; the last two, fluid, used when you encounter an obstruction overhead or on one side,. However, this is not the Way. To master the technique, you must have what is commonly known as the “attitude - no attitude”. That is, adapt from one to the other as the situation dictates without thinking so that your motion from the beginning of the contest to the end is one uninterrupted fluid motion: like the sea. The five elements, Lieutenant, are crucial to kenjutsu.’

And he attacked the student with such blinding speed and ferocity that Croaker literally jumped.

‘Approach from the middle attitude,’ Nicholas said and he performed it again,, slowed down immensely, the motions now magnified. He lifted his sword so that its ‘point’ was in the student’s face. The man immediately attacked and, as he did, Nicholas, with minimal motion, slashed the other’s sword to the right.

Nicholas stood with his sword high above his head, the upper attitude. The student struck forwards and, at the same time, Nicholas cut downwards.

Nicholas lowered his sword. The student attacked once more, moving his sword upwards. This time the student blocked him but in that same instant Nicholas’s sword freed itself from the block, cut across the other’s upper arms in a soft tap.

The student immediately moved to attack, coming in from the right side. Nicholas moved his sword until it was on his left side, below his waist. As the student attacked him, his sword flashed, upwards, scoring along the length and, crossing over, he cut across the man’s shoulders.

Now the student attacked from the cut upwards. Blocked, Nicholas slid gracefully into the upper attitude, delivering what would, in actual combat, have been a killing blow to the top of the student’s head.

They both stepped back, bowed to each other.

‘You see,’ Nicholas said, turning to Croaker, ‘the basics of kenjutsu.’

‘But you’re just using wooden practice swords,’ Croaker said. ‘You can’t hurt anybody -‘

‘On the contrary, these bokken are every bit as deadly as the katana is. They -‘

But in that instant he had whirled, somehow sensing the dual attack from both the student at his side and the sensei directly behind him. The student had already been disarmed with one cut and Nicholas was deep within battle with Fukashigi by the time Croaker had time to react to the situation. That would be about a tenth of a second, he calculated dazedly. My God, I saw the attack coming before he did!

The clash of the bokken filled the room but the contestants’ movements were so swift that they were a mere blur. Croaker stared carefully but, try as he might, he could not distinguish one movement from the next, so fluid were they. He recalled Nicholas’s analogy of this movement to the sea and he understood.

Then there came a momentous crashing as Fukashigi landed a ferocious overhead blow against Nicholas’s upraised sword. Nicholas was not moved backwards, however, and as he stood immobile, the sensei sprang backwards as lightly as a current of air, preparing himself for a second attack. But as the sword moved backwards to gain momentum for the forward thrust, Nicholas was there, extending himself outwards like a river, his own sword following precisely the path of the other’s and, beating down the ‘point’, stabbing inwards at the sense?’ head. It touched the tip of the nose but, at the same instant, Fukashigi’s left fist was at Nicholas’s face in a blow that might have broken his nose and stunned him.

Both stepped back, bowed to each other. Neither of them seemed to be breathing hard.

Doc Deerforth had left. Justine sat over her drawing board working on a design that had eluded her for four days. Once or twice she seemed to have it conquered only to see it slip away from her as she sketched it out. It was like trying to catch a minnow with your fingers, she decided. At length she threw down her pen in disgust, ripped the sheet of tracing paper off its drawing-pin anchors and crumpled it up.

She went into the kitchen, fixed herself a tuna fish sandwich. She had chewed at it without really tasting it, thinking of where she had gone wrong; surely the concept was sound enough. She washed the last of the sandwich down with a half glass of orange-juice.

She was dressed in a Danskin bathing suit. For a moment she stood staring at the drawing board as if it were her enemy. Dangerous, she thought. She knew the signs.

She grabbed a towel and went out of the door onto the beach. She ran now, dropping the towel onto the sand, high-stepping into the breakers, pushing herself through the heavy drag of the cold water until, seeing a wave looming high over her, ready to crash, she dived into its green side.

In solitude, she dimly heard its thunder over her, felt the slight quake of its violent passage. Then she was borne upwards on the swell. She launched out with cupped hands and kicking legs, stroking powerfully outwards, feeling the stretch in her lower back, her shoulders, her thighs. Bubbles streamed like molten metal from the corner of her mouth and she glided effortlessly upwards, breaking the shivering surface, blinking, gulping air before she went under again.

Nicholas filled her thoughts and, despite what she had told Doc Deerforth, she considered going into the city. She hadn’t heard from him. Surely that meant he was busy. God, she didn’t want that any more. But she wanted him, couldn’t help it. She continued to stroke outwards, coming up just long enough to catch sweet air. When she was far enough out, she turned to her right to parallel the shore.

She found herself thinking of the long black and gold lacquered sheath hung on his wall. In her thoughts, she went across the room and, on tiptoes, reached up slowly, freeing it from its hook. It was heavy, satiny, perfectly balanced. She put her left fist around the end of the sheath, her right around the long hilt of the katana. Nicholas’s katana. Inch by inch, as she exerted slow pressure, she saw the gleaming steel appear before her wide-open eyes extending in a crescent horizon. It was a silver dazzle, blinding her, an enormous erection that continued to grow under her ministrations. Breath caught in her throat. Her heart pounded. The pumping blood sang in her ears. And the cool wash of the sea was like a caress over her swimming body. ‘Her nipples erected and she felt an excitement stir between her legs. Still kicking, she put one hand down, cupped her mound. She moaned. Bubbles flew like birds thrown across the sky.

She felt a wash of cold water spiralling up her legs against her working thighs. It was so much like the stroking hand of a lover that, startled, her eyes flew open. The current encompassed her aching loins, now snaked up her torso. She rolled over. It was then that she felt the pull. At first it was only the tiniest of tugs but abruptly, as the tide and her swimming took her along, it wrenched at her.

Her impulse was to gasp but she clamped her teeth shut in time. The undertow was pulling her inexorably out to sea. She tumbled in its grasp, not end over end but around, as if she was a cylinder. Dizzied, she struck out blindly for the shore. She was an excellent swimmer and her breath capacity was good. Still, her first priority was to gain the surface.

Whirling, she struck out upwards but made little headway. The grip upon her was as real as if a sea serpent had appeared from some unseen abyss and had wrapped its slippery coils about her.

She broke the surface, gasping and coughing. But in doing so she had lost ground to the sea. She tried to lift her head, shake her eyes clear of the stinging salt water so that she could get an accurate fix on the shoreline. She was jerked under.

She began to panic. Her stomach heaved and she shivered, not even swimming now but merely struggling futilely. Why hadn’t she screamed when she was in the air? She tried to rise again but the fierce grip would not let her. She sank. And in sinking, found her way home. Near the murky bottom the stillness was absolute. She wondered at this for a moment, her mind still trembling in fear until she realized that the tug of the current was gone. She reached out blindly, encountered rock. She pulled, keeping herself at this level, and began to make her way in to shore.

Her lungs turned to fire and once her left thigh seemed seized in a cramp. She let it fall loose for a moment, relaxing her muscles, and it subsided. She went on scuttling over the bottom like an enormous crab. She desperately wanted to shoot upwards to the surface but her terror of the undertow was absolute. She pushed on. Her eyes felt as if they were popping out of their sockets and an unquiet wind blew in her ears, roaring.

At last she felt the warmth of the shallower water and, simultaneously, the gentle push of the tide onto the rising sand.

She sprang upwards, uncoiling her body fully, breaching the surface, sounding like a whale. She gasped and snorted, her insides turning to jelly. She felt the sand against her soles and, as she came out of the water, she found her legs would not support her. She fell to her knees and a wave inundated her. She fell over.

She heard the sound of raised voices as she vomited seawater into the surf. Then strong hands had her under her armpits. Her head hung down on her chest and she coughed.

‘Are you all right?’

She tried to nod, only vomited again, heaving wretchedly. She felt the dry sand against her back. She was aware of her whole body gasping. She felt as if she would never get enough air inside her. Her lungs worked like a bellows and the sound was so harsh and rasping to her ears that she might have been an asthmatic. There was a folded towel behind her head, elevating her face. A pins-and-needles tingling broke out along her cheeks and lips. She tried to raise her arms but they felt as if they belonged to another person. There was no strength left within her.