Linnear 01 - The Ninja (59 page)

The absolute stillness of the room was a tangible force, a rigid barrier holding him from further movement, even from speech.

Then one sound came, as sharp and near and startling as the first break of thunder from an unexpected storm.

It was the slither of steel against a sheath.

Cheong’s right arm moved with unnatural speed and for the briefest instant. Nicholas’s mind was unaccountably filled with the sight of bursting cherry blossoms, impossibly pink against green foliage. Now that it had commenced, the transition from absolute motionlessness to rapid movement was irrevocable.

Saw the blade flashing platinum as its length caught die lamplight, as blinding as the sun, slashing inward in the blur of conviction that was necessary. Into the left side of the abdomen.

A thin cry like a startled bird’s but no fear and the body remained still. A slight trembling, the perfect folds of the silk disturbed, an eyelash’s flutter just before the violent jerk with both hands on the hilt, left to right, horizontally across the abdominal cavity. Only now the shoulders shook somewhat and he could hear a gasping as of a bellows desperately working. Droplets of sweat rolling down her forehead, dropping, darkening the tatami.

This must be a dream.

Saw the tension come into her elbows as she brought the blade upward towards her sternum. Such strength and force of will many men did not possess.

With infinite slowness, as if settling by degrees, fists still locked around the hilt, Cheong’s body began to crumple forward, still in total control, a living monument. Her forehead touched the floor before the edge of the tatami.

As if that were a signal, Itami now moved. Her right hand fled to her side. With a harsh rasp, the katana, previously hidden within the folds of her kimono, was nakedly revealed and, standing now, she raised it high over her head. The blade commenced its downward motion with a hot hissing sound as if those fearful shades of steel were anxious to feel the warm flesh part.

In an instant, Cheong’s head was cleanly severed from her neck. Only then did the body lose its control and collapse completely. Blood seeped darkly, neatly, just a little of it, as if sprinkled there by a decorator.

‘No!’

At last released, Nicholas sprang across the room. Itami, staring down at the beautiful head, black and white and crimson, did not even look up.

‘What! What!’ He could not think. His tongue seemed an impossible weight in his mouth and he resisted the desire to rip it out. He looked at nothing but the body of his mother. And her head.

‘It is done now, Nicholas.’ Itami’s voice seemed distant and gentle at the same time. The bloody katana was at her side. ‘She is a child of honour.’

Fifth Ring

THE NINJA

I

New York City\West Bay Bridge, Summer Present

Someone began screaming, even before the lock shattered and the heavy door slammed inward in a crack of thunder.

The room was a shambles.

A bulky shape ran past him, across the room to the open window.

He began to struggle with it immediately because it had been his stupidity that had brought this on and if he did not work it out right now he would be no damn good in the next few hours and that would without a doubt prove fatal. He did not want to die.

Noted in passing the woman spread-eagled on the bed. Her flesh appeared to have been oiled, the light lying in long sweeps whitening the skin. Chinese.

He had known just as they had banged open the front door to Ah Ma’s, in the wake of the tsunami. Took you bloody well long enough, he berated himself.

The woman stared not at him but at the muscled legs crisscrossing hers, wide shoulders at the edge, of the stained coverlet, head off the bed at an odd angle. It was she who was screaming. The silken bond held her from moving. Her eyes were wide enough for him to see the whites all round. She might have been a madwoman and he saw why.

Upside down, Philip looked at him reproachfully; tongue “half bitten through between his teeth.

The screaming seemed to go on and on in cadence, as effective as a siren.

‘There’s another way,’ Nicholas had said. ‘A better way.’ He dipped half a dumpling into its dark brown spicy sauce, popped it into his mouth. ‘I don’t want any of your men getting hurt.’

Croaker looked at him quizzically. ‘You’re a strange bird, you know that? It’s what we get paid for, us cops - taking risks.’

They were in a dumpling house on Elizabeth Street between Canal and Bayard. The place was crowded, the noise level high.

‘Reasonable risks,’ Nicholas pointed out. ‘The ninja’s a sorcerer of death. They’re not going to be prepared for him.’

‘Aren’t you being just a little bit melodramatic?’

‘No.’

Croaker put down his chopsticks, pushed his plate away from him. A waiter immediately came to clear it away. ‘All right. What’s your idea?’

‘Let me go in alone.’

‘You’re nuts.’ He levelled a finger. ‘Let me tell you something, Nick. This is a police operation. You know what that means? I could be suspended just for taking you along. And you want me to let you go after him on your own? The commissioner would publicly string up any part of me left intact after Finnigan, my captain, had got through. Uh-uh. You’ll just have to be content with the way it is now.” ‘You and me then.’

‘No dice. That would mean I’d have to leave you to cover the rear. Can’t do it.

‘There’s going to be trouble, then.’

‘Not if we contain him in Ah Ma’s. That’s what we’ve got to do.’

What worried him most in those last few moments as they had climbed the steps to Ah Ma’s was the tactical disadvantage they were under. True, the element of surprise was in their favour, but only the man up in that suite knew the layout of the place, including the number of exits. Nicholas did not like any part of it.

On the first landing, he stopped Croaker, said, ‘You know, if we don’t get him within the first few seconds, we’ve had it.’

‘Just concentrate on getting the bastard,’ Croaker had said and started up to Ah Ma’s door.

Crouching in the dim hallway, Croaker had his .38 in one hand, the warrant in the other. That piece of paper had not been easy to obtain; Ah Ma had many influential friends.

Somewhere behind them the intermittent buzz of a defective light-fixture. A car passed in the street outside, honking its horn. The clatter of running feet. A sharp abrasive laugh.

Then the door was opening, Croaker was pushing aside a tall, elegant Chinese woman. The warrant flew through the air like a broken bird.

And Nicholas saw it all before him as if in a film. The killings, one by one, like links in a chain. One chain. Terry’s historical clues. Three signposts: Hideoshi, Yodogimi, Mitsunari, as obvious now as if they were glowing neon. Satsugai, Yukio, Saigo. The policeman sent to guard the dead Shogun’s mistress, a close enough approximation.

Idiot! he thought savagely as he stumbled into Ah Ma’s after Croaker. Why did I withhold it from myself?

An American man, eyes wide in terror, stood up awkwardly, dumping a tiny Chinese woman onto the floor. He ran from them, through one of the living rooms, into a side suite.

Croaker was already midway down the long corridor leading to the back suites. Flower, who had opened the door to them, had been calling for Ah Ma. She was calm even in this seeming crisis.

Ah Ma appeared just as Nicholas began following Croaker back through the place.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ She grabbed at Nicholas. ‘How dare you break into my apartment? I have many friends who will -‘

‘The Japanese,’ Nicholas said in perfect Mandarin. Ah Ma started. She was borne along as he rushed through the long corridor. ‘Where is he?’ Nicholas said. ‘He is all we want.’ He turned his head slightly. Doors passed them up, half-open, empty rooms lurking, mockingly. ‘Are you Ah Ma?’ Noise up ahead. Croaker kicking at a locked door.

‘He will destroy the place!’ Ah Ma cried. She thought of the communists coming in the dead of night, destroying the house before dragging out her husband. But this was America.

Nicholas perceived her agitation. ‘The Japanese is a very dangerous man, Ah Ma. He could hurt your girls.’

This she understood immediately and she fell silent, looking at him.

‘Where is he?’

“There. There. Take him then.’

He broke away from her, calling, ‘The left one. The left I’

Croaker swivelled, put a shot through the lock on the left-hand door. He went in with his shoulder and that was when the screaming began.

A blur of movement and Nicholas instinctively threw his arm across his eyes.

Flash of light, blue-white. The stink of cordite.

Croaker reeled and, running, Nicholas saw the last of a leg and shoe disappear through the open window. -

‘Christ Jesus!’

He turned. Croaker had one hand over his eyes.

‘What happened?’ His voice seemed hoarse.

‘Flash bomb,’ Nicholas said. ‘A miniature.’

Noise from the corridor, quickening.

‘He’s gone, Croaker. Out of the rear window.”

Patrolman Tony DeLong received his final instructions from Lieutenant Croaker via the two-way radio and drove the blue-and-white slowly along the length of Pell Street.

‘There it is,’ said Sandy Binghamton, his partner. ‘Pull over.’ DeLong doused the lights, parked the car on a diagonal, blocking the street. It served a dual purpose. It would help keep the suspect within their perimeter if he came out at the back of the building and it would discourage civilians from poking their noses into a potential red sector.

Binghamton was out first, swinging his big black bulk around the right side of the slewed patrol car. He paused, one hand on the chrome, and turned his head back towards the beginning of Pell Street. DeLong, still in the blue-and-white, was at this moment in radio contact with the second car but Binghamton wanted a visual fix. Civilian infiltration could be disastrous at this point and curiosity was a powerful motivator. He took his cap off, wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his uniform. He turned back, studying the configuration of the end of the street, the specifics of the target building.

DeLong shut down the radio and came out into the street and together they melted into the deep shadows thrown by the architecture on either side. The Lieutenant had been quite insistent on this score. No sound and no sight. He watched the line of windows three storeys up and thought about this. It was

an unusual procedure where more than one blue-and-white was being used. But DeLong had no worries. He had faith in the Lieutenant. He had worked with him for just under a year and a half and was now virtually assured, the next time the exam was given, of making sergeant. He wanted that very badly. He had had enough of the uniform division and now he longed for a permanent assignment to a detective squad. There, too, the Lieutenant could help him. And the extra money would come in handy now that Denise was due.

He felt Binghamton’s bulk reassuringly near him. They were old partners and this was his lone regret in moving up. He did not want to break up a partnership that had been so successful. But Sandy had no desire to become a detective. He was content to be on the street with the people, ‘It’s where I belong, man,’ he had told DeLong often enough. ‘I don’t want to be no desk jockey.’ It was just that they conceived of the same job in different ways. Lieutenant Croaker’s life wasn’t filled with paper work but he could not convince Sandy of that. Once the big man had made up his mind about something, it took the devil’s own-Binghamton nudged him but he had already seen it. A hot flash of intense light, followed by a surprisingly soft phutt.

‘Trouble maybe,’ DeLong said. They both drew their weapons, crouched in darkness, waiting tensely.

Movement at the windows, flickerings like a children’s shadow play.

‘Get ready.’ Binghamton’s voice was a basso rumble. ‘I gotta believe he’s on his way out.’

DeLong nodded and, together, they began to edge closer to the rear of the building. They moved as quietly as they could, keeping to the shadows. For the first time, DeLong noticed that several of the streetlights were out. Odd, since the New Chinatown Association lost no time in bringing such problems to the city’s attention. But that was New York for you.

They both saw the blur of movement at the same time. De-Long gave his partner a pat and ran across the street into the concealing shadows on the far side. The black man kept his eyes riveted to the building at the end of the street. He knew from long years of experience where DeLong was headed.

They began to close in, keeping the old-fashioned iron fire escape between them. Looking up, they saw the moving shadow racing over the slats and then - nothing. No vertical movement downwards.

The two men glanced at each other, then, cautiously, they moved forward until they were almost directly beneath the vertical ladder of the fire escape. From this perspective, it seemed an angular jungle of stripes and deep shadows. Randomly spaced lit-up windows made detection that much more difficult - insufficient light in many areas, spurious illumination in others, creating three or more shadows of the same object. ‘What the hell happened to him?’ DeLong asked. ‘I dunno.’ Binghamton holstered his .38, swung the iron ladder down with a grate. ‘But I’m going up to find out. He may have gone over the roof.’ He scrambled up onto the first-floor fire escape landing and drew his gun. Moving quickly and quietly, he climbed upwards. He had difficulty maintaining a clear view through the forest of metal striations.

He paused for a moment on the second floor at the sound of a police siren, rising and falling, as a blue-and-white sped along the bowery. Apparently it was heading uptown because the sound dopplered abruptly away, sounding odd and echoey in the summer night. Nothing to do with him. ‘Anything?’

DeLong’s voice drifted up to him along with the background wash of Chinatown, the traffic, slowed along the narrow streets, the distant chattering of a foreign language, singsong, rapid-fire. Gave a negative wave of his free hand and heard the buzzing in the same instant. Some kind of insect. But the impacts -one two three - pinpricks puncturing the flesh of his chest and spinning him around were from nothing so innocuous.