Linnear 01 - The Ninja (71 page)

Then the voices began in his left ear and he lifted one hand, touching a forefinger to the side of his head to settle more comfortably the electronic receiver in his ear canal. He heard Tom-kin and Nicholas talking, heard ‘Third Avenue’ and moved immediately towards the south side of the building where he knew the overhang jutted out into the street. When the limo passed by he swung down so silently and with such remarkable balance that no one inside knew.

He crouched on top and, unsheathing his katana, the night wind in his hair, thrust it down and inwards through the windshield,- screaming in ecstasy as the car beneath him shuddered like big game being brought down.

Croaker had been about to head south on Park when he thought he saw some movement near Tomkin’s limo as it went east. A sound came to him then. He could not identify it but he nevertheless braked hard, swinging the wheel abruptly to the left.

Tyres screeched and his back end skidded outwards. For a long moment he concentrated on holding the turn and not crashing into the median. Horns honked and he cursed softly, fighting the centrifugal force.

Then he was screeching uptown on Park back towards the tower.

In the first moments of shock he was at a distinct disadvantage. Saigo knew this and used it. He ducked under the initial force of Nicholas’s lunge and, twisting round, began the kansetsu-waza - the dislocation - with the point of his left elbow.

Nicholas, above Saigo, felt rather than saw the lack of resistance and immediately went into the osae-waza - the immobilization - defence and got it, deflecting Saigo’s elbow while, simultaneously, going on the offensive.

For an instant, Saigo had a short blade free. Then his hand clamped down and they were locked together, joined by the honed steel that was an extension of themselves - the most holy of holies, without which their lives themselves could have no meaning.

Muscles rippled along their hunched backs; sweat streamed from them. Saigo gritted his teeth. Nicholas pressed downwards. It was as if the sun and the moon, offshoots of a single entity, had entered into conflict. Was this the awesome force which bound Cain and Abel, decreeing that their hands be raised against each other?

Now was the time of their desperation. For ninja they were; of ryu that were sworn enemies when the silent stars in the sky had different positions, when the summers were perhaps hotter, the winters far colder, the continents even showing-the pimply faces of adolescence; such was the nature of endless time into which they had both willingly entered in their youth.

Nicholas went immediately for the air-sea change, to break the deadlock, but this Saigo had apparently been waiting for, for he countered with shime-waza - the three-finger strangulation - and caught Nicholas off guard. But the liver-kite, severely foreshortened because of the tight space, broke that. And all the time, Tom flopped intimately against them, his slowly coagulating blood smearing their faces and wrists.

Muscles bulged like puffing engines, veins and rolling sweat ribboning their glossy skin. Their panting breath mingled, magnified in this tiny, overheated space, and their eyes crossed

to look at each other. Mere words were, for the moment, beyond them and they hissed their hate at each other in a kind of elemental language that had not been heard since the dawn of man.

The blade of the tanto was turned away from him and Nicholas used the angle to force Saigo’s wrist backwards. But he was not Kan-aka na ninja, not an adept in koppo. Saigo, however, was and he knew how to stop this manoeuvre. He drew his right knee up and, simultaneously, began a movement with his right hand. Which was the feint? Or were they both?

In the split second of deciding, Nicholas’s grip on Saigo’s left wrist loosened and then was dislodged. The point of the tanto blurred immediately upwards towards Nicholas’s face. He caught the end of the hilt on the outer bone of his wrist, deflecting its flight.

There was only destruction in their hearts; their minds, cleansing themselves of the years of enmity, poured their power into the emotionalism of the moment, stoked by pumping adrenalin and the hsing-i, the so-called imaginary mental fist: that is, the enormous force of will their disciplines had imbued them with.

Now Nicholas used the heart-kite to break the deadlock and Saigo, stung and surprised, swung outwards, landing a blow on the side of Nicholas’s head.

Immediately he rolled upwards and out through the rent windshield. Nicholas followed, leaping from the bonnet of the stalled limo onto the sidewalk.

He saw Saigo, all in black, standing beyond the bent light-, post. He had thrown aside his katana’s scabbard and he held it now in the first position. He did not have to call to Nicholas.

In the periphery of his vision, Nicholas saw a car brake to a halt. Croaker got out. Without turning his head, Nicholas called out, ‘Leave us alone! See to Tomkin. He’s in the back of the limo.’

Then he advanced on Saigo.

When one is ninja, one sees not only with one’s eyes. Haragei allows one to see with the entire body. Thus it was that as Nicholas moved towards Saigo, it was his eyes which saw the other’s one-handed grip, but his body was already reacting.

Using the iai draw, he lifted the blade of his katana in time

to deflect the pair of shaken Saigo had flicked at him almost nonchalantly. They buzzed away like angry bees clattering down the brick steps behind Saigo to the lower plaza of the building. Beside him a modern sculptured waterfall crashed and splattered downwards to rectangular ‘rocks’ in a pool on the plaza.

Their katana clashed together in the Fire and Stones Cut, making them shudder. Only the superbly forged Japanese weapons could survive such power intact.

Saigo seemed frantic. His pupils were so large his eyes seemed all black, so alien that Croaker was transfixed by the hsing-i, which he perceived as an almost physical blow.

Saigo attacked strongly and swiftly. His strength was appalling, even to Nicholas. He felt engulfed in a kind of magnetic storm which, swirling him around, threatened to disorient him completely. And he fell back under the onslaught.

He saw Saigo’s lips moving slowly and softly and found himself wondering how high he was; how much of the drug was now coursing through him; and how he could use this to his own advantage.

He shook his head as a strike almost slipped through. Abruptly, his arms felt enormously heavy. His eyelids flickered. And there was a wolfish grin on Saigo’s face.

Nicholas staggered back, felt running water against the backs of his legs. He was in the waterfall, a steep drop at his back. How had he been turned round?

He felt a sharp pain in his arm, saw Saigo’s katana streaked with a line of blood like saliva from a mad dog and he knew what was happening to him.

It was the Kobudera. The magic not even the most fanatic of the Kan-aka na ninja would touch. Except for Saigo.

Back went Nicholas under the ferocious attack until they were both in the water. Magic was all around him, turning the night crimson. He seemed not to be able to feel his legs; he staggered. His fingers were numb, the grip on his katana faltering. His breath came in pants.

And all the while, Saigo came mercilessly on, striking and grinning, his lips invoking the Kobudera.

Nicholas’s foot slipped on a piece of sculpture which he could not feel and he almost went down. He was immediately slashed again. Blood sparked the night air. His blood. Agony filled him and it seemed as if he could not breathe. Whatever Fukashigi did during the night, he thought, it is not enough.

The rushing water drenched him and he shuddered. And in that great breath, which reached from his throat all the way down to his toes, came a thin stream of crystal clarity, piercing the fog that had shrouded him.

He thought of Musashi, the Sword Saint, standing in his garden more than three hundred years ago. ‘What is the “Body of a rock”?’ he was asked. In answer, Musashi summoned a pupil of his and bid him kill himself by slashing his abdomen with a knife. Just as the pupil was about to comply, the Master stayed his hand, saying, ‘This is the “Body of a rock”.’

This, then, Nicholas did, reaching down inside himself where something he did not even know existed lay in wait. He dragged it up with all his strength and, as Musashi wrote, ten thousand things could not touch him, not Saigo’s katana, not even the Kobudera.

In a blur, Nicholas cut from left to right with his katana. In shock, Saigo lifted up his own blade, his eyes wide and staring.

Blood spurted, brilliantly red as a cardinal bird’s plumage and Saigo’s torso arched back, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a rictus.

Water sloshed and sucked as they both struggled to maintain their balance. For Saigo, who had been cut through skin and flesh and even sternum, it was a Herculean task. His katana hung from his nerveless left hand, the fingers twitching relentlessly as they sought to do what their torn nerves no longer would allow them to. He weaved from side to side like a lush on one last monumental drunk. He grasped the top of his chest, near his shoulder blade, but Nicholas, using the point of his katana, flicked away the deadly shuriken needles he had clutched.

Groaning, Saigo held on to the hilt of his katana now, using it like a walking stick to prop himself up. Without its aid, he would have collapsed like an old man.

‘Kill me now.’ His voice was a harsh gurgle over the restless bubbling of the water rushing over the fall. ‘But not until I tell you, cousin, what I have waited long years to tell you.’ His shoulder twitched. ‘Come closer.’ His voice cracked, dropped abruptly in volume. ‘Come closer. We cannot have you savour your triumph, ah no!’

Nicholas took a step towards him. His chest and belly were streaked with blood and the iridescent seeping of his organs. For Nicholas, the pain was a dull throbbing all down his arm where Saigo had slashed him.

‘You should have cut me when you could,’ he said. ‘Your spirit was not resolved; the Kobudera consumed you and you slashed me instead. You see what one cut can do.’

Saigo staggered. ‘What is that you say, cousin? Come closer still. I cannot hear you.’ He grimaced in pain, a fleet passing cloud, and then it was gone, hidden behind all the layers that they had both acquired. This was, perhaps more than any other thing, what set Japan apart from the rest of the world, this bit of hard, unflinching stone beneath all the wrappers - the many, many layers - of distilled duty and filial love. This was why they must go forward always and never take a step back. But, O Amida, their memories were long indeed, stretching, it was said in many tales, beyond the grave itself.

Nicholas wanted to sleep now. His body had dealt with the shock and now, as it damped down on the pain, he was calming. A kind of lassitude was running…

‘You think that you have won but you haven’t,’ Saigo gasped out. A thin trickle of blood was seeping from one corner of his mouth. His busy tongue flicked at it, as an adder’s might, tasting it. ‘I see that I had better get on with it… But won’t you come one step closer, cousin so that I don’t have to shout? Good.’ His eyes burned coldly. ‘You believe that Yukio is alive, somewhere, living the life of a married lady perhaps, and thinking every so often of the old days with you. But, oh no, this is not so!’ He began a laugh which ended in a ragged cough. He hawked and spat pinkly between them. He looked into Nicholas’s eyes as he said, ‘She lies at the bottom of the Straits of Shimonoseki, cousin, precisely where I dumped her.

‘She loved you, you know. With every breath she breathed, with every word she spoke. Oh, I could drug her as I did that night with you and, for a time, she would forget you. But each time she would awake and it would be as before.

‘At last it drove me out of my mind. She was the only woman, the only one … for me and without her there were only men and more men and still more…” His eyes blazed like coals, red-rimmed and mad. The trickle of blood had thickened, running like heavy drops from a careless painter’s brush, darkening the water.

‘You made me kill her, Nicholas,’ he said in sudden accusation. ‘If she had not loved you -‘

‘If life was not the way it was -‘ Nicholas said harshly. His arms were already in motion and the katana was a crescent of living light, as if he were the Lord’s true messenger, whirring like a living entity through the hot, wet air.

In a bright arc, Saigo’s head sailed upwards, tumbling over and over on its final journey like a miniature planet, a crimson streamer like a kite’s or a comet’s tail laced behind it. Over the edge it went, bouncing downwards across the white steps, a child’s lost ball, coming to rest at last at the bottom of the waterfall : on the ninth step from the top.

‘- but it is,’ Nicholas said, finishing the sentence. At his feet, the water spun, rocking gently as if on a faraway tide, shivering. Caressing Nicholas’s spread legs.

Of course, after it was all over Croaker wanted to know just how he had done it, so he made Nicholas come down to the morgue with him to look at the body.

‘Can’t tell a goddamned thing from this,’ he said. ‘Christ on a crutch, we’d never have known.’

Nicholas looked down at the battered and broken body. It was Japanese, the same height and weight as Saigo. An exhaustive autopsy would turn up the difference in the musculature, of course; this man could not have been trained as Saigo had been. But dial would have happened only if you were looking for a difference.

He reached out, turned the head to one side, peered at the neck, touched the side with his fingertips. ‘There,’ he said.

‘What?’ Croaker looked at the spot. ‘His neck’s broken. So what? Happens all the time in a fall.’

‘No, Lew. It’s the way the neck was broken. I’ve seen that done before, years ago. Bones sheared through as if someone had used a surgical scalpel. No fall can do that. It’s koppo, Lew. A ninja technique.’

‘Christ,’ Croaker said. ‘He killed a man just to snooker us.’

Nicholas nodded. ‘Plans within plans.’

He listened, with nothing but the screen door between him and the coolness of the evening, to the quiet. To the breakers sighing as they rose, curled, and fell again and again like his own tidal breathing.