Linnear 01 - The Ninja (55 page)

A young couple turned a corner, came down the street. He gave the man a quick glance, went back to watching the front door of the fish store where Saigo had disappeared moments before. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. When he had reached thirty and there was still no sign, he took Yukio by the hand and went across the street.

A tiny bell rang in the back of the shop like a call to the penitent. It was a narrow, bare floor boarded place, its walls stocked with glass tanks of varying sizes. Only one or two were dry, cloudy with dust.

A man, thin, worn down by the passage of time, his skin as grey as yesterday’s mist, sat on a high wooden stool in front of a wall filled with filters, rolls of clear plastic tubing and stacked boxes of dried fish food.

No one was in the shop.

‘Is there a back way out of here?’ Nicholas asked him.

‘Hm?’ He looked up belatedly. ‘Oh, yes but -‘

Nicholas, with Yukio a step behind him, was already loping past him, through the short, dark passageway and out at the unbolted door.

They found themselves in a dim brick alleyway that was more a cul-de-sac. Only one way for Saigo to have gone and they followed.

They spotted him, already a block away, heading west. Twice

he doubled back and once, when he thought he had lost him altogether, Nicholas began to sweat because he didn’t think now that he would get a second chance; Yukio had seen to that. But they got lucky. He had been hidden within a small jostling crowd around a news kiosk, in plain sight, really. It might have been accidental or an extremely sophisticated manoeuvre. There was no way of telling. But the question remained. Why was Saigo taking any precautions at all? Why was he concerned about being followed?

Above their heads a full moon rode, blue-white, as large as a hanging paper lantern, harbinger of winter’s first snow. Clouds appearing as flat and substantial as curtains turned the illumination inconstant and, with it, perspective kept changing so that Nicholas was obliged to stop them now and again to check their proximity to the dark, hurrying figure in front.

Once Saigo turned around, his face a pale blur struck by the moonlight, and Nicholas forced Yukio into a doorway, hearing only the soft rasp of her violent breathing and the hammering of his own heart.

-Saigo’s silhouette was fast diminishing down the dark street and he grabbed her hand, pulling her along until, at length, he saw his quarry pause before a narrow doorway in a rather rundown wood-frame building, windowless and hulking. Disappeared like a nocturnal animal.

Nicholas stood perfectly still in deep shadow with Yukio by his side for several moments. ‘Now,’ he said in a low tone and took her, running across the wide street.

There was no sign on the building’s face to indicate what it might contain; no bells to ring. Nothing. The door was metal, painted in deep red enamel. He grasped the brass handle half expecting the door to be locked. Pulled it open.

Inside, they found themselves in a plain hallway without a true ceiling. A wide industrial-type stairway led upwards; it too was metal. There were no doorways on the ground level. Nor were there any on the first floor, they discovered. There seemed to be a lot of empty space, however.

The building seemed silent but for a peculiar kind of intermittent vibration coming through the rough wooden planks , of the vast landings.

They found the one door - closed and padlocked - on the third floor. Yukio coughed twice before putting her palm against her mouth; there seemed to be a great deal of sawdust hanging in the unquiet air.

One had an odd feeling here. Not merely the prickly sensation of trespassing but the uncomfortable hollowness in the pit of the-stomach that might come from standing in the foyer of a haunted house at midnight.

‘I want to get out of here,’ Yukio whispered in his ear. She tugged at Nicholas’s arm.

‘Shhh.’

He went slowly, cautiously across the landing towards the closed door. He had thought - yes. The light was so dim that he had not been certain. But now as he approached, he saw clearly the sign that had been hand-painted in black ink squarely on the centre of the door: a circle within which were nine black diamonds. They in turn surrounded an ideogram, Komuso.

Nicholas stared at the sign. Where had he seen that before? Surely he had - a ryu. It was a ryu. But which one? He had seen this sign quite recently. Just before he had left Tokyo, in fact. A regional offshoot, perhaps. Or -

Abruptly, he reached for Yukio’s hand, backing away.

‘What is it?’ she whispered. ‘Where are we?’

‘Come on,’ he said. And then, jerking her along with him, ‘Come on!’

Outside in the street he found that he still could not breathe. He began to run down the street with her in tow. The night seemed terribly still, Kumamoto deserted, and he had the impression that they were the only people abroad that night that they fled through a dreamscape from which they might never emerge.

His head pounded as if it might burst and a kind of fever careened through him. His mind whirled uncontrollably and he only vaguely heard Yukio’s panting questions.

He had recognized the sign on the door and, with it, both the reason he had come here after Saigo and the nature of his immediate future.

Back at the hotel, he left Yukio to go to her room alone.

‘Won’t you tell me anything?’

‘In a while,’ he said, still half distracted. ‘Take a bath or something. I’ll be in a little while.’

‘You’re not going out again,’ she said worriedly. ‘I don’t want to be here alone.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll just be in the next room.’

Once inside, he crossed to the window. The darkness seemed absolute. But still, perhaps only because the proprietor had mentioned it, he thought he could see the white plume of pumice belching from Nakadake, Mount Aso’s fifth column.

There was no doubt in his ‘mind now why Saigo had travelled such a distance to become part of this particular ryu, for there were none such as this in the Tokyo area. Kansatsu’s words haunted him now with intensity impossible to ignore: There are many ryu in Japan, Nicholas. Among these, the variety of disciples taught is virtually limitless. Good and evil are sometimes produced indiscriminately.

No wonder Saigo had been so furtive in his movements: so careful to backtrack.

It would be a natural precaution for a ninja.

For that is precisely what he had become. This Kumamoto ryu was no regional offshoot but a centre. The centre, to be more accurate.

The Ninja are not bound by the Way, Kansatsu had said, and that was correct. Yet ninjutsu was more complex than that and, as in bujutsu itself, there were many types propounded and taught. Good and evil. The black and the red. Kansatsu himself had shown it to Nicholas before he had left Tokyo. Of the red, he had said, far and away the most dangerous, the most virulent ryu is the Kuji-kiri, ‘It is the Chinese word for the “nine-hands cutting”, the basis for much of the ninja’s real or imagined power. It is said by many that these hand signs are the last remaining vestiges of magic in the world. As for me, I cannot say, but as you yourself have come to understand, there are times when the dividing line between imagination and existence can disappear.’ That was when Kansatsu had shown him the symbol of the Kuji-kiri ryu. It was the one he had seen on the warehouse door just moments ago.

He heard the water running in the bath next door; Yukio disrobing.

A suspicion was forming in his mind now and the more he thought about it the more certain he became. Had Kansatsu known what it was he would find here? Perhaps he had only suspected. But why was Kansatsu involved at all?

Abruptly, Nicholas had the cold sensation of being manipulated by forces he had not even suspected of existing. It was certain that Kansatsu knew quite a bit more about this situation than he had told Nicholas. Why hold back?

Outside, the moon had slipped its cloud mooring and now rode, unbridled, in the sky. The world was tinged with a blue light, cold and harsh and monochromatic. Far on the horizon - he was certain now - he could make out the rising oblique volcanic cone, its pale umbrella billowing like the aftermath of an explosion seen in slow motion. The still air held the pumice dust in languid suspension like a decadent sprawled across his silk-covered settee.

It seemed to him now that the lines of his life had already been drawn by some other hand at a time when he had been looking elsewhere. As he had said to Yukio this afternoon, he was committed. They had been set against one another, he and Saigo, from the moment they had first met. For what reason he could not yet say, yet it was a reality with which he must now deal.

What to do now?

He knew. He knew. And it “terrified him.

The bath water had drained some time ago. He got up from where he had been sitting in the window-bay and opened the connecting door into Yukio’s room.

He paused on the threshold. The lights were extinguished and all seemed still.

He called her name softly.

Blue moonlight was awash along part of the floor, interlaced with the oblique bars of shadow from the casement.

‘Yukio?’

He went silently into the room.

And immediately stopped. Haragei. Someone else was in the room. He turned his head without moving his body. Saw Yukio lying on the bed, a last bit of light outlining the bridge of her nose. She was on top of the covers. The other side of the double bed had blanket and sheets drawn down. An impression had been made there, as if by another body. She was naked. Her breasts and belly rose and fell in even breathing.

‘Welcome, Nicholas.’ He turned his head. The chair in the far corner, facing into the room. Moonlight fell part way along its back; its face was in shadow. ‘So nice of you to join us.’

‘Saigo. How did you get in here?’

‘How do you think, Nicholas? How do you think?’

‘I imagine there are many ways - for a ninja.’

He seemed unperturbed. ‘Quite so, oh yes. But, you see, I didn’t need any of them.’ He waited a beat. ‘Yukio let me in herself.’

‘Yukio…” He took two steps towards her.

‘It won’t do any good, Nicholas. She can’t hear you.’

‘She -‘

‘Oh no, no no, nothing like that. She’s merely sleeping. That’s a waste of time. You won’t be able to wake her. But don’t fret, she’s perfectly safe.’

“Wake her up,” Nicholas said. He was sitting on the bed. Her flesh felt cold, raised in goose bumps, but she seemed to be breathing normally.

‘I don’t think so. At least not yet, anyway.’ At last Saigo stood up. He was dressed in a black raw silk suit, rather old-fashioned, somewhat like the ones Chinese mandarins used to wear on formal occasions. His hair had been cut so short that he looked almost bald; the black stubble seemed somehow far more ominous. ‘The obvious thing to say now is that I’m sorry to be proved right. About you, I mean. But that would be a lie. I’m not in the least sorry. In fact, I’m delighted. I was right about you all the time. So was my father.’ He went into the centre of the room and Nicholas followed him with his eyes.

Saigo shook his head. ‘How you ever found out I cannot imagine. I have to give you credit for that.’

‘What,’ said Nicholas, ‘are you talking about?’

Saigo’s eyes flashed and his lips curled in a snarl just as if Nicholas had struck him. He flew across the room, grabbed Nicholas by the shirtfront. ‘All right,’ he whispered savagely, ‘I’m through being courteous to you. I see there’s no point. Did you really think I didn’t know that you were following me?

Do you think you could have if I hadn’t wanted you to? You really are a fool.’

Nicholas reached up, slammed Saigo’s fists from him. They stood, a little apart, eyeing each other, controlling their breathing, like two titans about to do battle over dominion of the world.

‘What do you think you’re doing to yourself?’

Tm saving myself,’ Saigo said. ‘I would have thought it was obvious. I have been accepted into the elite. Beyond bushi, Nicholas. Way beyond.’ He took a step forward. ‘And you can join me.’

‘What?’

‘Why did you think I asked you down here? This is no vacation spot. And then you show up with her. Idiot 1’

‘I love her.’

‘Forget about her. She’s nothing. Less than nothing. A whore.

Fucking -‘

‘Shut your bloody -1”

‘Yes, I forget about your English heritage. So chivalrous!’ He took another step forward so their chests almost touched. ‘So. Whatever she is or isn’t. She no longer exists for you or for me. I am offering you the world, Nicholas. You have no idea. None at all. Ninjutsu is -‘

‘But why the Kuji-kiri Why black?’

‘Oh, I see. I see how it is now. That scum Kansatsu has been talking to you. Yes, it’s black ninjutsu, but that is as it should be. We are the strongest, the most potent. With Kuji-kiri you become invincible. In all the world, there will be no one to stop you. Think of it, man, unlimited power!’

‘There is nothing in that that appeals to me,’ and he was spinning down obliquely across the bed, away from Yukio, using the wrist blocks against the darting eye-strikes Saigo drove at him with monstrous swiftness. He retaliated with sword-strikes, three in rapid succession. Thwarted, but that was all right because they had served their purpose and the adrenalin was surging through him like a tidal wave.

He rolled over, Saigo atop him and his immediate concern became the elbow-strike feint followed by a sword-strike aimed at his larynx. He worked his way out of that, found his left arm pinioned beneath the full weight of Saigo’s right shoulder.

He was in trouble, he knew. Inside, Saigo, with the ninjutsu training, had an enormous advantage. His only hope was to break away, get some reasonable distance between them.

He began a knee-strike, twisting away at the same time, but Saigo was not fooled and a blow caught the ridge of his collarbone; his frame flexed involuntarily. Still, he was fortunate that the strike was a near miss.

They were locked now on the floor, part of the counterpane drawn under their straining bodies. There was very little real movement for long minutes as they struggled, fingers grasping wrists, elbows against sternums, a kind of perverse engine, stifling on its own energy output.