The Miko - 02 (72 page)

Nicholas launched himself feet first at the oncoming hulk. It had not been difficult for him to cease to breathe a sufficient amount of the gas to put him under. At least eight separate forms of
ninjutsu
discipline had as their bases the breath and autonomic system regulation that Tibetan Yogi practiced. This extended to body temperature control as well.

The doctor yelped, skittering away as Nicholas careened into the oncoming
sumō
, the heels of his feet directed at Koten’s knees not, as someone unfamiliar with a
sumō
’s strength would have done, at his vast stomach.

Koten was incredibly quick and he almost regained the angle he needed to deflect Nicholas’ strike. But not quite. As it was, he saved himself from a pair of broken joints, moving slightly into the line of attack and thus canceling a measure of its force. He went down anyway.

Nicholas was aware of Protorov shouting orders, the doctor retreating past the fringes of the melee, two younger soldiers moving in. He was certain that he could handle them all. Yet some unbalanced equation stirred the periphery of his mind. He was busy with Koten and most of his consciousness was taken up with constantly shifting stratagems against four enemies.

Four!

It was his last coherent thought before Russilov plunged the six-inch needle into the meaty part of his upper arm. Too late, he lashed out. Five black spots swirled before his eyes; he saw five of each individual, closing in on him, felt Koten’s blow on the side of his head five times.

The five spots expanded into five black wells down which he plummeted. From a long way off echoes came to him, words without meaning, questions without answers. Then the powerful drug hit his cortex and he passed into unconsciousness.

“Good work,” Protorov said to Russilov. “You see, Doctor,” he went on, “contrary to what your book may tell you, we are
not
dealing with an ordinary human being. This man could reach out with one finger and destroy you.”

The doctor said nothing; he was quietly shaking, thinking, I do not understand this at all. He should have been unconscious long before this. “Perhaps he is faking yet again.”

Protorov snorted. “I think not. He has no power to counter injections into his bloodstream.”

He nodded toward the wooden scaffolding set against part of the back wall. “All right, Koten,” he said softly. “String him up.”

You must return to the source
…his
source.
Masashigi Kusunoki’s words rose up from her unconscious, penetrating the dialogue between Sato and Phoenix. Akiko had played and replayed that section of tape as if this might give her some further insight, turning an artifact over and over again in a vain attempt to divine its secret.

She sat in Koten’s room, her forehead against her drawn-up knees, her arms girdling her shins. She was naked, and in the lamplight her skin gleamed as if oiled. Shadows rilled her even as light revealed her. Hidden and open, she was a physical paradigm of the riddle inside herself.

The people who sent him, who trained him represent a very great threat to Japan.
Masashigi-san’s words.

Masashigi. What had possessed her to go to the Gyokku
ryu
in the first place? She did not know or could not recall. She remembered the first moment she had seen Masashigi Kusunoki, though. It was as if she had found a connection with her past—
some
past. As she belonged with Saigō in her private life, so she seemed to belong with Masashigi in her martial one. She had been married to Saigō for three weeks, gone from Kyōki’s castle for six.

The Gyokku was where Masashigi-san had made his first stand for her. Together they had left when the other
sennin
of the
ryu
rose up and dissented; they would not allow her—a woman—to stay.

Together they had gone to the Tenshin Shoden Katori in Yo-shino.

Why had he done this for her? What was it that the
sensei
had seen in her? What made her so special? And how wrong he had been! All his loyalty had brought him was death; death by the hands of the one he had defended.

Akiko remembered the smile that wreathed his face like lilies at the moment he passed from life into death. Why? Why would anyone smile at that instant? Sadness had no place in Masashigi-san’s life. He was attuned to the universe, at peace with himself and the cosmos. He could not have welcomed death. He was, at least in Akiko’s mind, somewhat of a holy man. That was another reason why she had chosen him as her first victim. If the masking of her
wa
that Kyōki had taught her would work with such a one, it would work on anyone.

There was something in the air—a spice perhaps—that Akiko could not define. Her head came up and she looked around as if she suspected that she was not alone. For a moment the air shimmered before a half-open
fusuma.
Papers stirred on the desk farther into the room. But it was only the wind, wasn’t it?

Akiko shivered slightly. Why was she dredging all this up now?
The people who sent him, who trained him represent a great threat to Japan.
Masashigi-san had been speaking of the
muhon-nin
Tsuts-umu. She herself had slain the second
muhon-nin,
Tengu, returning that which he had stolen to the
ryu.

Now she knew that there had been a third traitor within the Tenshin Shoden Katori. Masashigi Kusunoki rose up like a specter before her and bade her do what he had trained her to do; to fulfill the promise he alone had seen in her. She thought of Sato, Phoenix, and Nicholas in the north, in Hokkaido. Especially Nicholas.

She rose and went into the bedroom. From the bottom of a low drawer where Sato would never look she drew out a kimono, light gray on dark gray. The top half of one side was stained a dark brown where some of the
sensei
’s fountaining blood had spattered.

Slowly, reverently, she drew it on. Within moments she was ready. She headed north.

When Nicholas awoke, he found himself on a wheel. He rose out of unconsciousness rapidly but did not open his eyes, change his breathing pattern, or in any other way give those who he assumed to be in the vault with him any indication that he was now conscious.

Whatever they had pumped him with was very powerful for its effects were not yet gone. His head felt light, he felt a touch of vertigo; he was not at all sure that he could fully trust his senses. Still, logic dictated that he attempt to assess his current situation.

He was bound by fingers, wrists, waist, thighs, and ankles with leather straps. He was suspended off the floor. He recalled the dim outline of the scaffolding.

But what worried him most was Protorov. He was smart enough to understand what kind of creature Nicholas was. He alone among the Russians had suspected that Nicholas’ training would keep him from succumbing to the ambient gas. He had set Nicholas up superbly, distracting him with Koten—the obvious main threat—while he kept within Nicholas’ sight. Only the young officer who had been in charge of the
rotenburo
, Russilov, had been missing. Not missing but behind Nicholas. And no time for even
haragei
to work. The stress factor had been too high. Nicholas reflected that perhaps he was getting too old for this. He should have felt Russilov’s presence. He had underestimated the Soviets—Protorov in particular—and had paid the price.

Opened his eyes.

“Ah,” Viktor Protorov said amiably, “did you enjoy your rest?”

How does he know so much about me? Nicholas asked himself as he tried to flex his fingers. The straps would not allow it. Interesting, Nicholas thought. He had this ready for me; surely this would be unnecessary for a prisoner without my skills.

Nicholas was aware of how many people were in the room—two besides himself and Protorov: Russilov and the doctor—as well as where they were. Russilov stood just behind and to the right of his directorate chief; the doctor was near Nicholas’ left shoulder, a hypodermic and medical kit on a stool beside him.

Protorov was not interested in a reply. Instead, he unfolded a long sheaf of computer printout which then trailed down behind him like a tail. He held one page up in front of Nicholas’ face. Nicholas stared at the markings, trying to focus his brain. He thought he had seen something quite like this in several magazines such as
Scientific American
and
Smithsonian
, detailing passes of various NASA satellites across the face of the Earth.

“Does this area appear familiar to you,
Gospadin
Linnear?” So far Protorov had used nothing but Russian with him. “It should. It is the northern half of Honshu, the whole of Hokkaido, the Nemuro Straits, the southerly end of the Kuriles.”

Protorov had not taken his eyes off Nicholas. “Here,” he said, stabbing at one of several red-marked spots, “offshore, is a crack between two geological plates. Here and here, on Honshu itself, are where earthquakes of sizable magnitude—over seven points on the Richter Scale—will occur within the next week. Already an onset trembler has been felt here, just to the northwest of Tokyo.”

Protorov snapped his fingers and Russilov, like a prestidigitator’s assistant, replaced the exhibited item. In this frame the magnitude had been increased so that a detailed section of the topography from the first page was reproduced.

“Now here,” Protorov continued, pointing again, “is another hot spot. But lo and behold, it is not at any previously known geological fault. Rather it is at a precise spot where nothing had shown before. There is no
natural
reason for its existence.”

The paper rustled like anxious insects. “What do you make of that,
Gospadin
Linnear?”

“What the hell am I looking at, anyway?”

Protorov clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Now that would be telling.”

During his adolescence Nicholas could recall coming in contact with a number of Japanese nuns. To him the sight had been incongruous. The Japanese spirit had come to be synonymous with acquiescing to nature, the elements of the cosmos. To him, Christianity preached a divine order that had been meted out by man himself, though its adherents professed otherwise. The history of the Roman Catholic Church was a bloodstained banner lifted to the concept of domination.

All Catholics, he had found, were arrogant, and none more so than nuns or priests. It was their utter faith in a narrow spectrum morality that took into account absolutely no natural factors. Man’s nature as well as that of his environment held no interest for the Church’s hierarchy. Their moral rectitude rendered them deaf, dumb, and blind.

It occurred to Nicholas now that, though he might howl in rage at the comparison, Viktor Protorov possessed those same hideous qualities espoused so righteously by the Church. He was not so far from priestly, though in a manner he could never comprehend; Communism was as blind in its moral rectitude as was Catholicism.

“If you don’t tell me,
Gospadin
Protorov,” Nicholas said, “I can provide you with no coherent answer.”

“Can you tell me that you do not recognize these contours as they might appear from afar?” Protorov brandished the sheets, flailing his tail behind him. “Say, 35,888 kilometers above the earth’s surface. That would give it a synchronous orbit, keep it stationary over this one spot in the Pacific.”

Protorov stepped closer. “Do you see this,
Gospadin
Linnear? The Straits of Nemuro. An international boundary between Japan and the Soviet Union.” His eyes were fever bright. “And do you further see the area marked in red? It is at the bottom of the Straits, in Japanese territory…and in ours!”

He gave a nod and Nicholas knew what was coming. There was nothing he could do for his body now, but his mind was another matter. The gleaming steel needle entered his upper arm a scant centimeter from where the first shot had been administered. His skin ballooned outward, fluid swamping the bellows of his lungs. He was drowning; it made him want to cry out. His heartbeat accelerated wildly.

Discipline.

He took his consciousness by the hand as a father will his frightened child, and entered a place that held no fear.
Getsumei no michi.

Somewhere outside of him Protorov called in a voice turned aqueous. “What do you know of
Tenchi
? How much does Minck know? You will tell me that,
Gospadin
Linnear. Before you die you
will
tell me that much!”

“Will you tell me now why you really followed me all the way to Hawaii?”

Rick Millar sat at one end of the clear plastic raft they had rented at the hotel beach shack. His long, tanned legs dangled in the water. He wore a surfer’s brief bathing suit he had bought in Lahaina. “I think you already know the answer.”

Justine smiled. Her heart felt lighter than it had in many months. “I’m flattered that you wanted to seduce me.”

Millar laughed good-naturedly. “It wasn’t
all
lust, you know. I do want you back at the firm no matter what happens between us.”

“It’s already happened,” she said. “I’m glad you came, actually.”

He watched a school of small golden fish race by just above the reef over which they bobbed. “You must love him a great deal for you to be so loyal.”

What Justine thought about most now, what she held most closely to her, was the memory of waking in the middle of the night, anxious and afraid, and being able to reach out to touch Nicholas’ hand. It was a hand like no other she had ever encountered; she would lie there stroking its bottom edge, hard with cast-iron callus. Like hugging a Teddy bear, the motion would calm her and soon she would slip back to sleep.

But those were the old days and that was the old Justine. She did not believe that fear and anxiety would be a part of her life any longer.

Staring out over the sun-drenched Molokai Channel where the humpback whales broke the surface of the water in white and black splendor, she saw her immaturity as if it were part of another person: clearly, objectively. It was already separate from her.

She supposed now that she had always been afraid of love…true love such as she felt for Nicholas. Her entire adult life had been a series of encounters with males who could not possibly give her the stability of a twined life. Rather she had been attracted to men lusting to use her, to leave her, to, in effect, return her to a lone state where she felt more secure, more the little girl, and where—this being the most astonishing revelation of all—she would be assured of her father’s intervention, his protection, and, yes, a manifestation of his love for her.