Eric van lustbader nic.., p.6
Eric van Lustbader - Nicholas Linnear 01, page 6
‘I felt - something. Yes.’ Her thumb stroked the back of his hand, tracing the lines of the bones there. ‘A spark from a flame.’ She looked down at her feet, at the damp black sand, at the rushing water. ‘I’m afraid to trust you.’ Her head came up abruptly as if she had made some decision and was now determined to adhere to it. ‘My men have been such bastards and - I did the picking, after all…’
‘How can I be any different, is that it?’
‘But you are different, Nick. I can feel it.’ Yet she took her hand away from his. ‘I can’t go through it again. I just can’t. This isn’t a movie. I don’t know that everything is going to turn out right.’
‘When do you ever know that?’
But she ignored him, continuing, ‘We’re brought up with a kind of romanticism that’s so false it leads us astray. Falling in love and marriage is forever. The movies, then TV told us that, even - especially - the commercials. We’re all electronic babies now. So then we pass out of “us” and into “I” - what do you do when the “us” doesn’t work and the “I” is far too lonely?’
‘You keep searching, I suppose. That’s all life is anyway. It’s one great search for whatever it is we want: love, money, fame, recognition, security - all of those things. It’s the degrees of importance which varies in each individual.”
‘Except for me.’ Justine’s voice was tinged with bitterness now. ‘I don’t know what I want any more.’
‘What was it,’ he said, ‘that you wanted in San Francisco?’ He saw only her outline, an ebon figure in the darkness, blotting out the starlight where she stood.
Her voice, when she answered, was like a wisp out of time, a cold tendril, slightly unearthly, so that he felt a brief shiver run through him.
‘I wanted,’ she said, ‘to be dominated.’
- ‘I still can’t believe I said that to you.’
They lay, naked, beneath he sheets in his bed. A beam of moonlight came in through the windows overlooking the sea like an ethereal bridge to another land.
‘Why?’ Nicholas asked her.
‘Because I’m ashamed of it. I’m ashamed I ever felt that way. I don’t ever want to be like that again. I reject it.’
‘Is it so terrible, then, to want to be dominated?’
‘The way I wanted it … Yes, it was - unnatural.’
‘How do you mean that?’
She turned around and he felt the soft press of her breasts against his skin. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more. Let’s just forget I ever said it.’
He took her bare arms in his hands and looked her full in the face. ‘Let’s get one thing straight. I am who I am. I’m not -what was that guy’s name in San Francisco?’
‘Chris.’
Tm not Chris and I’m not anyone else who’s been in your
life.’ He paused, studying her eyes. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? If you’re fearful of the same things happening, then you’re bound to see me as Chris or someone else. We all do that at times, unconsciously, because we all have archetypes. But you can’t do that now. If you fail, if you don’t break through now, you never will. And every man you meet will in some way be Chris and you’ll never be free of whatever it is you fear.’
She broke away from him. ‘You’ve got ho right to lecture me this way. Who the hell do you think you are? I say one thing to you and right away you think you know me.’ She got up off the bed. ‘You don’t know shit about me. You never will. Who the fuck cares what you have to say anyway?’
He saw her moving away and, a moment later, heard the bathroom door slam.
He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The urge to smoke was strong so he turned his mind to other matters. He ran his fingers through his hair, staring sightlessly out at the sea. Even now, Japan lapped at his consciousness. There was a message there, he knew, but because he himself had forced it to be buried so deep, it was slow in working its way upwards to the light.
He stood up. ‘Justine,’ he called.
The door to the bathroom flew open and she emerged, dressed in a dark tank top and jeans. Her eyes were bright hard points, flashing.
Tm leaving,’ she said tightly.
‘So soon?’ he was amused by her elaborate melodramatics and, too, he did not quite believe her after all.
‘You bastard! You’re like all the rest!’ She turned towards the hall.
He grabbed her right wrist, whirling her back. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Away!’ she cried. ‘Out of here! Away from you, you sono’abitch I’
‘Justine, you’re acting idiotic.’
Her free hand slashed upwards, struck him across the face. ‘Don’t you say that to me.’ Her tone was low, a growl; her face was an animalistic mask.
Without thinking, he slapped her. The blow was hard enough so that she reeled backwards against the wall. Immediately, his heart broke and he said her name softly and she came into his arms, her open lips against the tendons of his neck, her hot tears scalding his flesh; she stroked the back of his head.
He picked her up and carried her to the rumpled bed and they made violent love for a very long time.
Afterwards, with her lithe arms about him, her legs twined with his, he said quite seriously, ‘That will never happen again. Never.’
‘Never,’ she breathed, echoing him.
He heard the phone ringing in his sleep and drew himself up through the layers from delta to beta to alpha. Just as he awoke, the muscles in his stomach tightened. He turned over and reached for the receiver; beside him, Justine stirred.
‘Hello?’ His voice sounded furry.
Justine put her arm across his chest; even her nails were warm.
‘Hi! It’s Vincent.’ There was a pause. ‘Say, am I disturbing you?’
‘Well, sort of.’
‘Sorry, buddy.’
There was only a singing on the line and he woke up. Vincent was too much a Japanese to intrude yet he would not be calling this early unless it was important. It was up to him now, Nicholas knew. If he said ‘later’, Vincent would hang up and that would be the end of it.
Justine’s head moved into the crook of his shoulder and her face went from light to shadow.
‘What is it, Vincent? I suspect this isn’t a strictly personal call.’
‘No. It isn’t.’
‘What’s up?’
‘You read about the stiff they took out of the water a couple of days ago?’
‘Yeah.’ His stomach rolled over. ‘What about him?’
‘That’s why I’m out here.’ Vincent cleared his throat, obviously uneasy. I’m at the M.E.‘s building in Hauppauge. Do you know where it is?’
‘I know how to get to Hauppauge, if that’s what you’re aiming at,’ he said shortly.
‘I’m afraid I am, Nick.’
He felt as if he were abruptly holding onto three pounds of air. ‘What the hell is going on? Why all the goddamn secrecy?’
‘I think you ought to see what we’ve got for yourself.’ Vincent’s voice seemed strained. ‘I don’t - I don’t want to prejudice you in any way. That’s why I’m not giving you anything to think about over the phone.’
‘Buddy, you’re wrong about that. You’re giving me plenty to think about.’ He glanced at his watch: 7:15. ‘Give me about forty minutes, okay?’
‘Sure. I’ll meet you outside, guide you in.’ There was silence for a moment. ‘Sorry, buddy.’
‘Yeah.’
When he put down the phone, he found that the palm of his hand was slippery with sweat.
Nicholas looked again at the sliver of metal under the eye of the microscope, a fractional shaving from the small piece Doc Deerforth had recovered from the breastbone of the corpse.
‘Here are the spectrometer readouts,’ Vincent said, slipping the sheets across the zinc alloy table. Nicholas took his eye from the microscopic fragment. ‘We ran it through threetimes to be certain.’
Nicholas picked up the sheets, running his gaze over the figures. But he already suspected what he would find there. Still, it seemed incredible to him.
‘This steel,’ he said carefully, ‘was manufactured from a particular type of magnetic iron and ferruginous sand. There are perhaps twenty separate layers. The size of the fragment makes it difficult to tell. I’m going by past experience.’
Vincent, whose eyes had never left Nicholas’s, took a deep breath, said, ‘It wasn’t made in this country.’
‘No,’ Nicholas agreed. ‘It was manufactured in Japan.’
‘Do you know what this means?’ Vincent said. He sat back, including Doc Deerforth in the discussion.
‘What can be inferred from that alone?’ Nicholas asked.
Vincent took a folder off the tabletop, handed it to Nicholas.
‘Take a look at page three.’
Nicholas opened the folder, leafed through the pages. His eyes dropped down the typewritten sheet. He sat perfectly still but, abruptly, he could feel the rushing of his blood through his veins. His heart raced. He was nearing that far shore. He looked up. ‘Who did the chemical analysis?’
i ‘I did,’ Doc Deerforth said. ‘There’s no error. I was stationed in the Philippines during the war. I’ve come across this particular substance once before.’
‘Do you know what this is?’ Nicholas asked him. ‘I can make a pretty good guess. It’s a non-synthetic poison that affects the cardiovascular system.’
‘It’s dou,’ Nicholas said. ‘An enormously powerful poison distilled from the pistils of the chrysanthemum. The technique of its manufacture is virtually unknown outside Japan and even among the Japanese very few know how to make it. Its origins, it is said, lie in China.’
‘Then we know how the poison was administered,’ Vincent said.
‘What do you mean?’ Doc Deerforth broke in. ‘He means,’ Nicholas said heavily, ‘that the man was killed by a shaken - a Japanese throwing star - part of a shurken, a small-blade arsenal - dipped in dou.’
‘Which means we also know who killed him,’ Vincent said. Nicholas nodded. ‘That’s right. Only one kind of man could. A ninja.’
For reasons of security, Doc Deerforth hustled them out of the building. They were careful to take with them all the pertinent readouts and evidence.
Since none of them had bothered with breakfast, they stopped on the way back to West Bay Bridge, pulling into a diner right off Montauck Highway that offered authentic Portuguese food.
Over strong black coffee, broiled sardines and clams in a rich steaming winy sauce, they sat and watched the cars silently pass on the highway. No one seemed to want to begin. But someone had to and Vincent said, ‘Who’s the new lady, Nick?’
‘Hmm?’ Nicholas turned from the window and smiled. ‘Her name’s Justine Tobin. She lives right down the beach from me.’
‘On Dune Road?’ Doc Deerforth said and when Nicholas nodded, he added, ‘I know her. Beautiful girl. Only her name’s Tomkin.’
‘Sorry, Doc,’ Nicholas said. ‘You must be mistaken. This Justine’s named Tobin.’
‘Dark hair, green eyes, one with red motes in it, about five-seven -‘
‘That’s her.’
Doc Deerforth nodded. ‘Name’s Justine Tomkin, Nick. At least, that’s how she was born. You know, Tomkin, as in Tomkin Oil.’
‘That one?’
‘Yep. Her daddy.’
Everyone knew about Raphael Tomkin. Oil was but one of his many multinational moneymakers but by all accounts the most lucrative. He was worth - where had he read it? In Newsweek, perhaps - somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred million dollars, the last time anybody had bothered to count; at that rarefied level, there did not seem to be much of a reason to do so.
‘She doesn’t like him much,’ Nicholas said.
Doc Deerforth laughed. ‘Yah. You could say that. She obviously doesn’t want any part of him.’
Nicholas recalled Justine’s words, He’s as dead as he could possibly be. Now he began to understand the irony of that remark. Still, he was annoyed at finding out this way.
‘Now, what can you tell me about the ninja?’ Doc Deerforth said around a bit of clam flesh.
Outside, a white Ford with black trim pulled up next to the diner. As they watched, a big man with a red face and bulbous nose stepped out and walked towards them.
‘Hope neither of you mind,’ Doc Deerforth said. ‘I phoned Ray Florum when we got here. He’s the commander of the West Bay Bridge Village Police. I think he’s got a right to hear what’s going on. Okay?’ Both Nicholas and Vincent nodded their assent. ‘Nick?’
‘It’s okay, Doc,’ he said as lightly as he could. ‘It just caught me off guard. I didn’t expect her to -‘ He waved a hand in lieu of finishing.
The door opened and Florum pushed into the diner. Doc
Deerforth introduced him around and he sat down. They filled him in.
‘Quite literally,’ Nicholas said, ‘ninja means “in stealth”.’ Florum poured himself some coffee as Nicholas continued. ‘Outside of Japan, there is almost nothing known about ninjutsu, the art of the ninja. Even there, it has been poorly documented primarily because it was knowledge that was both utterly secret and jealously guarded. One was born into a ninja family or one gave up all hope of becoming one.
‘As you may know, Japanese society has always been rigorously stratified. There is a highly defined social order and no one would even contemplate deserting his station in life; it’s part of one’s karma, and this has religious as well as social overtones.
‘The samurai, for instance, the warriors of feudal Japan, were gentlemen, of the bushi class; no one else was allowed to become a samurai or carry two swords. Well, the ninja evolved from the opposite end of the social spectrum, the hinin. This level was so low that the translation of that term means “not human”. Naturally, they were a far cry from the aristocratic bushi. Yet, as clan warfare increased in Japan, the samurai recognized a growing need for the specific skills of the ninja, for the samurai themselves were bound by an iron-clad code of bushido which strictly forbade them many actions. Thus, the samurai clans hired the freelance ninja to perform acts of arson, assassination, infiltration and terrorism which they themselves were duty-bound to shun. History tells us, for instance, that the ninja made their first important appearance in the sixth century A.D. Prince Regent Shotoku employed them as spies.
‘So successful were they that their numbers increased dramatically during the Heian and Kamakura periods in Japanese history. They concentrated in the south. Kyoto, for example, was dominated by them at night.
‘But the last we hear of them as a major factor in Japan is during the Shimabara war in 1637 when they were used to quell a Christian rebellion on the island of Kyushu. Yet we know they were active all through the long Tokugawa shogunate.’
‘Just how wide is the scope of their skill?’ Doc Deerforth’s nostrils were clogged with the rotting stench of the Philippine jungle.
‘Very,’ Nicholas said. ‘From the ninja the samurai learned woodsmanship, disguise, camouflage, codes and silent signalling, the preparation of fire bombs and smoke screens. In short, you would not be wrong to consider the ninja military Houdinis. But each ryu, that is, school and, in the ninja’s case, clan, specialized in different forms of combat, espionage, lore, and so on, so that one was often able to tell by his methods from which ryu a particular assassin came. For instance, the Fodo ryu was known for its work with many kinds of small concealed blades, the Gyokku was expert at using thumb and forefinger on the body’s nerve centres in hand-to-hand combat, the Kotto was proficient at breaking bones, others used hypnotism and so on. Ninjas were also quite often skilled yogen - that is, chemists.’
There was a heavy silence between them until Vincent cleared his throat and said, ‘Nick, I think you ought to tell them the rest of it.’
Nicholas was silent for a time.
‘What does he mean?’ Florum said.
Nicholas took a deep breath. -‘The art of ninjutsu,’ he said, ‘is very ancient. So old, in fact, that no one is certain of its origin, though speculation is that it was born in a region of China. The Japanese took many things from Chinese culture over the centuries. There is an element of … superstition involved. One could even say magic.’
‘Magic?’ echoed Doc Deerforth. ‘Are you seriously suggesting…?’
‘In the history of Japan,’ Nicholas said, ‘it is oftentimes difficult to separate fact from legend. I am not trying to be melodramatic. This is the way it is in Japan. Feats have been ascribed to the ninja that would have been impossible without the aid of some kind of magic.’
‘Tall tales,’ said Florum. ‘Every country’s got ‘em.’
‘Yes. Possibly.’
‘And the poison you found?’
‘Is a ninja poison. Swallowed, it’s quite harmless. A favourite method of administering it was to make a quick drying syrup of it and coat the shaken with it.’
‘What’s that?’ Florum asked.
‘These are part of a ninja’s arsenal of silent, easily concealed weapons, his short-bladed shuriken. The shaken is a star-shaped metal object. Flung through the air by the ninja, it becomes a most lethal weapon. And coated with this poison, the weapon need not even puncture a vital spot for the victim to die.’
Florum snorted. ‘Are you trying to tell me that that stiff was killed by a ninja? Jesus, Linnear, you said they died out three hundred years ago.”
‘No,’ Nicholas corrected. ‘I merely said that that was the last time they were used in any major way. Many things have changed in Japan since the sixteen hundreds and the Tokugawa shogunate, and the country is, in many respects, no longer what it once was. However, there are traditions that are impossible to obliterate by either man or time.’
‘There’s got to be another explanation,’ Florum said, shaking his head. ‘What would a ninja be doing in West Bay Bridge?’
‘I’m afraid that’s something I can’t answer,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I know this. There is a ninja abroad here and in all the world there is no more deadly or clever foe. You must act with extreme caution. Modern weapons - guns, grenades, tear-gas -will give you no security against him, for he knows of all these things and they will not deter him from destroying-his intended target and escaping unseen.’
