Linnear 03 - White Ninja (67 page)

The Buick's headlights illuminated Nicholas's car, a 1962 white Corvette with red side scoops. Nicholas had had it completely reconditioned a year after he had bought it, and it ran superbly.

'Hey, someone's in there,' Conny said. His voice was wary, and Nicholas could feel the tension come into his frame.

The lights were on in the house, but Nicholas could not see anyone moving around.

'It's OK,' Nicholas said, getting out of the Buick. He reached in, pulled out his overnight bag. 'Go back home, Conny. You've got a lot to do.'

Conny nodded, waited until Nicholas stepped back, then reversed out of the gravel driveway.

Nicholas went up the steps to the house. Behind him, the black Atlantic pummelled the shoreline unmercifully. Out here in winter, he knew, the beach could lose two to three yards to the sea and to storms until spring came and the winds and tides turned more favourable. It was ten to fifteen degrees cooler than it had been at the airport, and he was grateful for the relief from the sticky heat. He was hungry and he needed a shower.

On the porch, he used his key without ringing the bell. Despite what he had told Conny, he was cautious. He did not know where Senjin Omukae, the dorokusai,. was, or even what he really wanted beyond the rest of So-Peng's emeralds.

If you die now, if you die too easily, you will never understand. What had the dorokusai meant? Nicholas thought he was closer to finding out.

He crossed the threshold, heard music coming from the stereo, Tracy Chapman singing 'Fast Car'. One of Justine's favourites. He knew he should relax a bit, but he could not.

He looked around the wide, open living-room, dining-room and kitchen. The space looked huge, yawning after so much time in Japan where everything, it seemed, was in miniature, exquisite mini-worlds standing shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, in a land where for centuries chronic overcrowding had been a way of life. Amazingly, the large fish tank, the demarcation between the living and the dining areas, had been maintained. A trio of lacy angelfish swam regally by, and

his ancient whiskered catfish was wiggling up one side, vacuuming algae as he went.

'Gus, old buddy,' Nicholas whispered to the catfish. 'It's good to see you.'

He put his bag down, went silently all through the house. When at last he came to the master bedroom, he found Justine's suitcases opened on the bed. She had not unpacked, but clothes had been laid out. He heard the shower running. In a moment, it was turned off.

He stood there in the semi-darkness, in his own house, listening to his wife moving about in the bathroom. Yet he did not move. It occurred to him that he felt like a stranger here, and the realization saddened him. He had no home, no family. The only thing he seemed connected to was Japan.

He abruptly realized what this connection had cost him, and he wondered whether it was worth it. Japan was his milieu, but it was not Justine's. Until this moment, he had not realized what a fundamental difference that could make. Now, standing here, alone, in the midst of everything that should have been familiar and comfortable and was not, he could put himself in Justine's mind, see as she saw the alien in the familiar.

At that moment, he almost turned and walked away, but he could not. She rooted him to the spot as much as did his anomie, an ironic juxtaposition that he could not yet come to grips with.

Nicholas did not know what to do.

Then the door opened and, in a billow of fragrant mist, Justine came out. She was wrapped in a bathsheet, a towel turbaned about her hair. She stopped dead when she saw him.

'Oh, my God, Nick!'

Then she was in his arms, sobbing, kissing him all over his face, her warm, damp body pressed close to his. He could feel the tremors of her muscles, smell her

through the soft scents of the soap and the shampoo and the body talc.

Nicholas, enfolding her, warmed by her, felt his love for her, felt that it had never died. But whether it had merely receded on its. own by time and circumstance or he had pushed it away he could not say.

He recognized that, in a way, his withdrawal from her - indeed, from everyone around him - had been a necessary part of his awakening to his own destiny: the knowledge that he was tanjian. And this thought saddened him in a way he could not fully explain and was, as yet, unprepared to explore.

All he knew was that he was drenched in Justine once again, just as he had been so many years ago when they had first met along this stretch of beach only a few yards from where he was now standing, their feet wet, their psyches wary, suspicious of each other and any incident that would so wildly, wilfully bring two people together with such breathless abandon.

All he knew was that he was whole once more, and a kind of exultation, fierce and undeniable, gripped him so that he held her to him all the tighter.

'Dear God, I love you, Justine.'

And she was crying. 'Nick, Nick, Nick,' she whispered as if the mere evocation of his name would assure her that he had really returned to her. 'I was so afraid that I would never see you again. I - '

'Why?' He pushed her a little away from him so that he could look into her face. He wanted to see, he needed to see that she was all right. 'Where would you get an idea that I wasn't coming back?'

'I - I..." Justine shook her head, the towel turbaned over her hair coming down around her shoulders, her dark hair, damp, tangled, an erotic web, coming free. 'I don't know. I think - '

And he could see it in her eyes, the green hidden and

murky in the dominant brown, the red motes in her left iris, dull, remote. He could see the Tau-tau lurking there like a spider crouched in its web, and his heart broke, and he had to fight the fear because this was so new to him that he lacked the confidence to know whether he could free her, really free her as he had freed her from the ninja hypnosis that Saigo had once worked on her.

'Someone told you,' he said. 'Someone put it into your mind.' To shock her because he knew this much: that he would need her help, he could not exorcise the Tau-tau on his own.

'Yes...' Justine looked bewildered, as if he had pulled her roughly out of a deep sleep. 'I remember... something.' She looked into his face. 'Like a dream or a painting in smoke, shimmering, shifting, dancing away when I try to look it full in the face.'

He saw the fright steal into her face, darken her eyes, obscure the red motes. 'Nick, what's happening to me? I feel... I feel like I'm living in two separate worlds. I feel, I don't know quite how to say this, but as if I'm locked up and been set adrift at the same time. Crazy, huh?'

'Not nearly as crazy as you think,' Nicholas said. 'Why don't you get dressed, and I'll see what kind of food -'

'Don't leave me.' Justine reached out for him. 'Please, I - Nick, I don't want to be alone now that you're here. I just want to look at you, touch you. I - It feels like it's been so long since I've seen you, years instead of weeks. I - ' She held her head. 'I don't know what's happening to me.'

'Get dressed, honey,' Nicholas urged her. 'You'll get cold standing around like that.'

Justine smiled, slipped into jeans and a black cotton turtleneck sweater. 'Better?' She came over to him. 'Nick, what is it? What's happened?'

He put his arms around her. 'Remember Saigo? Remember what he did to you, hypnotizing you?' She nodded. 'Somewhat the same thing has happened,.! think. Though you don't remember it clearly, the dorokusai who is after me came to the house in Tokyo. He spent some time with you.' He saw the puzzled look on her face. 'You don't remember someone new, a stranger coming to the door?'

'No,' Justine said. "There was only the cyclist. But I don't remember what happened to him.'

'What cyclist?'

'I - Well, I almost ran him down, I think. I was coming out of our driveway and didn't see him. I was lucky and so was he; he just went into the cryptomeria on the other side of the road. He said he was OK but I insisted he come and have some tea.' She gave Nicholas a little smile. 'I was practising being more Japanese, thinking to myself his refusals were just his way of being polite. He came, though.'

'And then what happened?'

'What?' Justine looked startled. 'Oh, I don't know, really. I can't seem to remember. I guess he came with me to the house, had some tea, and left.'

'No, that's not all that happened,' Nicholas said. "The cyclist was Senjin Omukae.' "

'Yes. That was his name. I remember that now.'

'He's the dorokusai, Justine.'

He felt her begin to shake all over again. 'Oh, Nick.' Tears welled in her eyes. 'Nick, what's happened? What's he done to me? I can't remember...'

'I know exactly what he's done,' Nicholas said, although he didn't. 'I'll take care of it.' Although he had no way of knowing whether or not he could. He wondered, then, how much he could - or should - tell her of his own new circumstances. Would it make her feel more secure or just deepen her fright if he were to

tell her that he himself was a tanjian? He did not know.

He led her into the living-room, where there was more light and more space. He poured her a whisky, brought it to her.

'But what has he done to me?' Justine insisted.

'He wants to get to me through you.'

She took a sip of the Scotch, shuddered. 'Maybe he wants me to kill you, like Saigo wanted."

'I doubt it,' Nicholas said. "This one wants me all to himself. There would be no satisfaction for him in a murder by proxy.'

Justine's eyes were wide and stating. 'Nick, do you realize what we're talking about?'

Nicholas knew that he had never loved his wife more deeply or completely than he did at that moment. He kissed her hard on her lips, feeling hers soften, open beneath his. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'Senjin had one chance to kill me up in Dr Hanami's office and he didn't do it. Good for me; too bad for him. There's an old Japanese saying: If you fail to kill an enemy, you had better dig two graves.'

Justine collapsed into his arms. 'Oh, God. Death and more death.' She put her head against his chest. 'Isn't there another way? Oh, there must be.' She looked up at him. 'Can't we just run away somewhere, anywhere, I don't care where, I swear it, just so long as - ' But she stopped, seeing the look on his face that confirmed her own inner sense.

'No, I see this is the only way now. Because of your life, Nick, and how you've got to live it. All right, then.' Slowly, she covered his hand with hers. 'I accept whatever must be, whatever is to come. Karma. Because I love you and only you.' She drew his hand down to her belly. 'But I want you to remember that whatever happens, our future - or part of it - is in here, waiting for its time. Promise

me you won't do anything to jeopardize that future.'

'Justine, are you saying - ?' But he already knew, could tell with his gift, just as Senjin had, that she was pregnant. 'My God, a baby.'

'Are you happy?'

'Yes. Oh, yes!' He kissed her. 'When is it due?'

'Early in the spring.'

'A baby,' Nicholas echoed, his hand still on her belly.

"This one well keep, Nick.' She pressed herself hard against him. "That's my promise to you. This baby will live, grow up, be our future... together.'

Nicholas picked her up, carried her over to the long modular couch. They lay together, entwined, twinned, each reaching for that part the other had withheld during the past bleak months out of anger, frustration and fear, but not indifference, never indifference.

Above them, in their floating city, the angelfish rippled their translucent fins, darting serenely in and out of the vertical water plants, while Gus, the catfish, slept, sated, in his niche between two plastic spars of a mock shipwreck.

The heat rose in them, the same delicious fire they had first felt when they had coupled frantically, knowing little about each other except that they burned to be closer than close.

Justine's fingers were already unbuttoning his shirt, pushing it back off his chest and arms. He licked her lips, her ears and, when he pushed aside the turtleneck, the hollow of her throat.

'I want you.'

Nicholas began to lift up her sweater, but she moaned, 'No, no, I want you now. This instant.' Unbuckling his belt, pushing all his clothes down as he worked at her jeans.

She wore nothing underneath, and he was inside her almost immediately as she urged him on top of her with

her fingertips and her thighs. She thrust up hard, once, twice, three times.

'Oh!' she cried, her neck arched, her eyes fluttered closed. 'It's been so long.' Her hips moved with his, and she grew hotter, her inner muscles working at him frenziedly, her mouth whispering, 'Yes, yes,' almost a religious chant or a prayer of thanks, her hips bucking out of control until he could do nothing else but explode inside her, filled with her, and her with him, all they had now, but everything they ever wanted.

Kusunda Ikusa was in the Imperial Palace East Garden but he wasn't there to jog. This was the only part of the Palace open to the public, filled with traditional flower-bearing shrubs and trees, tiny ornamental buildings as old as the Palace itself. From here one had an excellent view not only of the Imperial Palace but the circular path around it, a favourite track for many of frenzied Tokyo's avid joggers. Of course, they ignored the pall of exhaust fumes from the monstrous convergence of vehicular traffic beyond the moat.