Dreaming Spies (13 page)

2. An ape climbing to the crow’s nest at midnight

3. Odd sounds down one of the air intakes

4. Turmoil in Second Class: single shoes going missing

5. Pictures that changed on the walls

In the normal course of events we would have discounted pretty much all of these as a combination of alcohol and the innate desire to top a neighbour’s story, but we agreed on two things: there were too many odd occurrences to be discounted, and there was a pattern to them.

Most took place in the wee hours of the morning, and the majority had their source at the upper reaches of the ship.

We capped our dinner with several cups of strong coffee, then pulled out the trunks from under our beds in search of dark clothing, and spent the intervening hours tormenting each other with Japanese drills while we waited for the ship to quiet. The first wave of passengers took to their beds, followed by those who had been dancing and at cards. The deck-lights dimmed, the sounds of footsteps and running water faded. Eventually, we slipped out from our cabin to make for the nearest companionway.

I’d had enough experience at this kind of thing to carry one of the light-weight but dark-coloured blankets from the bed: it was dry out tonight, but even in the tropics, an open deck can feel cool.

The outside steps, used in good weather and during the day, saw little use at night, in part because they were dark (it being difficult for those in the bridge and crow’s nest to see through deck lights). We chose the dim external treads over the brightly-lit internal stairways and ascended to my perch from the afternoon, on the sun deck. Only instead of settling into chairs, we hoisted ourselves onto the shelter roof, and there we lay, facing opposite directions with the blanket tucked firmly over our legs.
An hour crept past. Ninety minutes. I was wondering how much longer I could lie motionless with a single layer of light wool between me and a young typhoon, when the door from the aft staircase opened, casting a swath of light across the empty decking.

Holmes felt me stiffen.

The ship’s personnel tended to keep an eye on even the darker corners of the decks. A half hour before, a man had come up the forward staircase to run his torch-beam across the bolted-down chairs, over the canvas-wrapped lifeboats, inside the deck’s roofed shelter. But there was no ladder onto the top of the shelter, and he had not chinned himself up to discover us.

This one strolled down the centre of the deck, casually playing his torchlight across the boats—an entire platoon of pirates could have crouched in them, unseen—before wandering to the underside of our shelter. I held my breath for the sight of a head peering over the shelter roof, but there came only the rasp of a cigarette lighter, and a flare of light from below.

We lay, breathing in his smoke and listening to his dyspepsia, until he gave a sigh, then walked over to the lee side to let the wind take his burning stub. He headed for the aft stairs, and left us to the night.

Three minutes later, the same door opened, then closed—only this time, the light that spilt out was dim and indirect, as if the bulb had blown out.

I did not think it had blown out. I gave my companion’s leg a gentle kick, and when Holmes had eased around to face in my direction, I breathed words into his ear. “Whoever it is, they’re in trousers, and they removed the light bulb before they opened the door.”

The moon was not yet full and the perpetual haze of the tropics added to the obscurity, but the combination of nature’s illumination and indirect light from the bridge and radio rooms gave glimpses of the figure’s progress: across to where the lifeboats were mounted, up beside them, a pause—then the figure was gone.

Holmes breathed into my ear, “Under the canvas?”

I nodded. We waited, and saw nothing … nothing at all. Five minutes passed. After ten, I whispered, “Doesn’t look like an illicit liaison. Could it be a passenger looking for a quiet—wait.”

I turned my head a fraction to see what had caught the corner of my eye. There were always birds around a ship, although fewer in the middle of the China Sea than near port, but the high motion had not been that of a gull stretching its wings. I let my gaze soften, waiting …

My hand tightened on Holmes’ arm. He let slip a muted oath.

Neither of us believed what our eyes told us.

A shadow moved high among the lines, more a dark absence than an actual figure. The Marconi wires strung between the ship’s twin masts—like a washing-line between flag-poles—were higher than the smoke stacks. Even in broad daylight they looked no thicker than twine. And at night? With any sheen the wire once possessed long covered over with soot? Swaying in the wind?

“I believe Miss Sato may have misled me, when she said she was not trained in the family business,” I murmured. The chance of there being a second small, superbly athletic person onboard was minuscule enough to dismiss.

“And clearly, her area of expertise is not in juggling or gymnastics.”

“We mustn’t risk distracting her.”

“A fall would kill her,” he agreed softly.

With care, we edged off of the shelter and crept forward, faces down so that from above, we would be nothing but darkness against dark decking.

At the forward-most funnel, we planted our backs against the warm metal and lifted our eyes.

It took a terrifying thirty seconds to locate a faint shape against the sky, moving with excruciating slowness. I began to wonder if the next of the periodic deck-checks would find us here, chins locked upward. As for the night watch in his crow’s nest—well, sailors tended to keep their eyes out for objects in front and on the horizon; this one might not anticipate an approach at his own level.

Then without warning, she dropped. But before the oath left Holmes’
lips and my fingers had fully clamped around his arm, we saw that it was not a fall, but a swing. As the wire climbed to its anchor on the mast, the increase of angle made further upright progress impossible (as if it had been “possible” before!). Instead, the figure now shinned along the remaining twenty feet to the wood—which must have felt solid as a mountainside after one hundred fifty metres of swaying, half-inch wide, plaited metal. Certainly, she clung to the mast for a time before starting a descent.

Holmes absently prised my fingers out of his flesh and took a step to the side, the better to see her movement. I was just trying to visualise the complex arrangement of wires and ropes when I saw that she had, indeed, decided not to risk passing an arm’s length away from the man in the crow’s nest.

The highest of the guy-wires met the mast just below the Marconi line. When that wire’s drooping flags gave a brief jerk, it was clear which way she had chosen for her return to
navis firma
. The route would take her to the top of the well-lit and always-occupied bridge, but from there, she would most likely hop down the darker aft side of the bridge to the decking around the funnel.

Precisely where we stood.

Holmes and I faded back, taking up positions on either side of the massive stack. I stood motionless, my eyes focussed on the air as I waited for movement at the edges of the bridge. It seemed a very long time before one section of dark sky assumed a greater solidity, climbing over the rail and dropping to the deck-boards with a gentle thump.

She took a step away from me, and Holmes spoke.

“I wonder if I might—”

She leapt instantly—fortunately in my direction, but moving so fast, I did not pause for thought, just launched myself at her with a hard tackle.

It was like wrapping my arms around a badger. She reacted with the fury of a trained fighter: squirming around beneath me before we’d even hit the deck, using the bounce of our weight to kick out hard, followed by a blow that would have killed me if it had landed a few inches to the side. I flew off with nothing more than a scrap of fabric in my left hand.

She was on her feet and braced for a sprint when a torch beam went on and a gun went off.

I staggered upright and looked at the crouching figure of darkness, rendered motionless by Holmes’ warning shot. Her head was visible now—the cloth in my hand was a dark silken mask—but the rest of her, neck to toe and down the backs of her hands, was concealed under a matte, dark blue fabric.

I brushed myself off, relieved to find nothing broken, then looked at the man with the torch. “You brought your
gun
?”

“A good thing I did.”

“A bit excessive, to capture an acrobat, wouldn’t you say?”

“Miss Sato is no acrobat,” he said. “Or, not merely an acrobat.”

“No?” I looked at our prisoner. Her sleek hair was tousled, but the rest of her showed no sign of distress, or even exertion. Slowly, she rose from her sprinter’s crouch, giving me a glance that seemed oddly apologetic. She took a breath, let it out again.

“I am
shinobi
,” she said, then smiled. “Ninja.”

Death walks in silence
.

Eyes see all, but are not seen
.

Ghost walking through walls
.

One thing about shipboard travel: there is always a public room open to welcome insomniacs, card-game addicts, or a trio seeking to remove themselves from the vicinity of a gunshot before the men in the bridge came looking.

I suppose our odd clothing looked like pyjamas—as indeed it was, in parts. But our behaviour, compared to a herd of young men galloping all over the ship in search of a feathered hat, was hardly worthy of note. We chose the cocktail bar’s dimmest corner, ordered drinks to get rid of the sleepy attendant, and kept our voices low.

Miss Sato watched the man leave; I, on the other hand, had not taken my eyes off of her, or let her get too close to me, for the briefest instant. “What do you mean, you’re a ninja?” In 1924, this was not a word known to the general public, but my baritsu teacher back in Oxford had told me of the secret Medieval cult, thankfully long faded into obscurity. Still, if this crazy female envisioned herself as a ninja assassin, maybe Holmes ought to keep his gun in his hand.

“We call ourselves ‘shinobi,’ ” she answered. “Or for women, sometimes,
kunoichi
. But like the arrangement of my names, I use what a Westerner might know.”

“Enough grammar. Why are you here?”

“I told you, I am going home.”

“But why else? Ninja are hired assassins. Who is your target?”

“Russell—” Holmes started, but Miss Sato held up her hand to him.

“ ‘Ninja’ means ‘spy,’ ” she said carefully. “We deal in information, not death. Yes, some of us have killed. Some of us steal, when that is necessary. And some are for hire, like
ronin
—you know the word ‘ronin’? Samurai without masters? But many of us are not assassins, and not for hire. Mr Holmes.”

I had thought the silence profound before she spoke his name. If she knew his name, then … The damnable thing was, her voice sounded so reasonable. And for certain, she knew how to fight.

I shook my head. “The ninja died off centuries ago. They’re folklore, like the Knights of the Round Table. Romantic stories of invisibility, special equipment, walking up walls—all that kind of nonsense.”

“Yes. And no. If we are invisible, it is because we are below notice. We use the tools we have at hand, and our most important skills are those of deception—to look like someone who belongs in a place. We only walk up walls if there is no easier way to get inside.” She smiled; I did not.

“Although since at times there will not be an easier way,” Holmes spoke up, “acrobatic training can come in handy.”

I could not help a quick glance sideways. “Holmes, surely you’re not taking this person’s claim seriously?”

“Our own Templars were officially disbanded in 1312, but do you imagine they actually packed their things and went meekly home? All the confusion and romantic twaddle has allowed them to hide in plain sight up to the present day. Why not the same thing in Japan?”

I thought about it for a moment, thought about the times Sherlock Holmes had openly admitted to being Sherlock Holmes precisely in order to be laughed off—then my mind snapped back to the central
question here. “Whether or not there’s an organisation behind her changes nothing. If she’s here to kill someone, we need to lock her up until we get to Hong Kong and can hand her over to the authorities.”