Linnear 01 - The Ninja (7 page)

But for Nicholas it was somewhat different, for part of him, at least, was well aware of those things which lay hidden there within that interminable beach, and he shuddered to face them again, to gaze upon their hideous countenances. For once before he had come upon them and had almost been destroyed.

They went out of the house into the summer night. The clouds had delivered themselves westward and the sky was at last clear. The stars shone, winking, like ornaments on velvet, making them feel as if the world had wrapped them in a shawl manufactured especially for that occasion.

They strolled along the beach at the waterline, far out, for it was low tide. Their feet picked up the damp sea grapes and their soles felt the brief pain of the fiddler crab shells.

The surf tumbled in low, faintly phosphorescent hillocks that seemed like another world viewed from the wrong end of a telescope. Near to hand, they were alone on the beach; a point of orange, a smokily glowing coal, bespoke a late barbecue in the lee of a dune far down the night.

‘Are you afraid of me?’ His voice was as light as mist.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not.’ She stuffed her hands in the front pockets of her jeans. ‘I’m just afraid. It’s been with me for more than a year and a half, this fear like a diamond shadow-image I can’t manage to shake.’

‘We’re all afraid - of something or other.’

‘Jesus, Nick, don’t patronize me. You’ve never been afraid like this.’

‘Because I’m a man?’

‘Because you’re you.’ She stared fixedly away from him, his muscularity. She rubbed her palms along her bare arms; he thought she shivered. ‘Oh, Christ.’

He bent down, scooped up a sand-encrusted stone. He wiped it off, feeling its ineffable smoothness against his skin. Time had taken away all the edges; time had dictated its shape. Yet the essence of the stone - its mooted colour, striations, imperfections of structure, density and hardness - remained. Indomitable.

She took the stone from him and hurled it far out into the water. It struck the surface of the sea without a splash and sank from sight as if it had never existed, but Nicholas could still feel the weight of it where it had rested in the palm of his hand.

‘It would be so simple,’ he said, ‘if we could approach people we cared for without any past so we could see them without any coloration.’

She stood silently regarding him and only a slight tremor along her neck told him that she had heard.

‘But we can’t,’ he continued. ‘Human memory is long; it’s after all what brings us together, what causes that peculiar tingling, sometimes, when we first meet, like a faint but unmistakable brush of recognition - of what? A kindred spirit, perhaps. An aura. It has many names. It exists, invisible but unallayed for all that.’ He paused. ‘Did you feel it when we met?’

‘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 do\u,’ 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 do\u.’

‘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.’