The Toyotomi Blades (2 page)

“Yes, sir?” The intercom’s volume was turned low, but the puzzled surprise in the guard’s voice still came through.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes, sir. Quiet night. Nothin’ going on. Is something the matter?”

“No,” LaRusse said after a pause. “Just thought I’d check to make sure you were awake. Good night.”

“G’night, sir.”

LaRusse clicked off the intercom. He lay in bed puzzling out the mystery of the sound. He was forty-four stories above the street and there was only one door to the apartment. He felt the stir of a cool draft and he decided that the sound must be from the heating system. It was always acting up. He took his hand off the gun and threw back the covers, finally getting up to go to the bathroom.

On the way back to bed, he thought about the dish of lasagna; he could taste the aromatic tomato sauce, firm noodles, seasoned meat, and the creamy cheese. To hell with his diet. He was hungry and he wanted that lasagna. He padded back out of the bedroom and down the hall.

The apartment definitely felt colder than normal, and when he entered the living room on his way to the kitchen, he was astounded to smell rain and to feel the chill of the storm. Before him, an entire panel of glass was removed and lying on the living room floor. The wind and rain were beating in through the windowless opening, causing a widening stain on the expensive carpet.

His first thought was that the storm must have somehow worked the glass free, popping it out of its frame. He walked over to investigate and noticed that there was some kind of suction cup clamped to the face of the glass. The suction cup had been used to remove the glass.

LaRusse turned immediately to retrieve his gun, but before his turn was complete, a knife flew across the room with power and authority. It penetrated the flesh just below his right jaw. The suddenness of the attack and the massive drop in blood pressure from the severing of an artery muted the pain and fear, leaving him confused more than anything else. As he tried to pull the knife from his flesh, he staggered, stepped on the slippery wet pane of glass, and fell backwards through the opening.

As he started the long tumble to the street, the confusion cleared and the cold ratiocination that he had depended on for his livelihood and life returned. His senses became acutely aware of everything that was happening. He felt the warm gush of blood on his hands as he continued to try to remove the knife. He felt the sharp sting of the blade as he tugged at it. He felt the lesser sting of the drops of cold water hitting him on the face, hands, and bare feet. He saw the blur of glass panels passing him as he tumbled towards the earth, and he noted with detachment that he continued to pick up speed.

Perversely, his last thoughts were of the hunger he still felt and how the lasagna in his refrigerator was so much better than his mother’s.

The Ninja hesitated only long enough to make sure the man wasn’t going to be a threat. The need to press his attack was eliminated when the man fell through the window opening. He was surprised at how little time it took to actually kill a man. It was his first.

He had wanted to avoid a confrontation with the owner of the apartment, but hadn’t shrunk from the necessity of acting. It was just like his practice. Over and over, endless repetitions of throwing a knife. That repetition was how he had acquired the skills that made up his
gei,
or art. To him it was an art, and the death of the man was the natural extension of that art, an extension that turned his years of rather esoteric training into a practical craft. The craft of killing.

He turned his attention back to the wall of the living room where the real target of his efforts was hanging.

2
      

T
wo days later, the cold wind of Rotterdam was dancing around the cars on Oude Binnenweg as the silver-and-white tourist bus pulled to the curb and shuddered to a halt.

“Gentlemen, we come to the next stop.” Wouter Leeuwenberg’s English was slightly accented but his meaning was clear. There were groans and considerable conversation when the group saw they were parked in front of another museum. Since the conversation was in Japanese and Leeuwenberg spoke no Japanese, he couldn’t understand what they were saying. But he could guess.

The common language between Leeuwenberg and the Japanese tour group was English so he felt safe speaking to the bus driver in Dutch. “Oh-oh, the natives are getting restless.”

“What are you going to do?” the driver asked.

“What can I do? That horse’s ass Hans scheduled us for six museums today. Six! This is the fourth and even I’m getting sick of it. These guys have already seen the palaces of London, the art of Paris, and the sex shops of Copenhagen. Then I get them.” He groaned. “I’ll show them Rotterdam, but why does Hans put together an itinerary that starts with six museums on the first day?”

The last of the tourists filed out of the bus and Leeuwenberg started after them. “I think Hans hates me,” he called over his shoulder to the bus driver as he stepped out after them.

One of the Japanese tourists approached him. He had chubby cheeks and a smooth face that made him look like he was twelve years old. “Excuse me, but what is this museum?” he asked.

Leeuwenberg smiled his best tour guide smile and said, “This is the Hollandse Scheepvaart. Very famous! Major attraction!”

The Japanese had a look of skepticism cross his face that approached incredulity. He said something to the rest of the group and a lot of disgusted muttering in Japanese passed between the members of the tour. Then he said something and the group laughed.

He turned back to Leeuwenberg. “This is a famous museum?”

“Yes, it is,” Leeuwenberg lied.

“Ah,” the Japanese answered. “The Louvre!”

“No, not the Louvre. The Louvre is in Paris. This is the Hollandse Scheepvaart. The Dutch Shipping Museum.”

“But this is a famous museum?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, the British Museum!”

“No, it’s not the British Museum! It’s the Hollandse …” Leeuwenberg’s heated correction died as he noticed the twinkle in his questioner’s eye and the laughter from the rest of the group. So much for the inscrutable Japanese, Leeuwenberg thought, as he bustled past to lead the group out of the wind and into the museum. He was going to have a mutiny on his hands if he didn’t get this tour going right away.

Inside the museum, another Japanese face wasn’t so openly mirroring his thoughts. As the only Asian face in the sparsely populated museum, he knew he would be conspicuous. And he had built his career on not being conspicuous.

He knew that Japanese tour groups were taken through on a regular basis, so he had delayed his inspection until such a group showed up. The flock of Japanese businessmen headed by a bustling Leeuwenberg entered the museum, and the man studied the group carefully. He decided that it would do. In this group of tourists, he could disappear as surely as he could on a darkened night.

He approached the stragglers at the end of the group and asked if they would mind if he followed them through the museum. A few members of the group thought this request unusual and perhaps even a bit impolite, but they didn’t dream of refusing a fellow countryman.

As he walked through the museum with the group, the man loosened his tie and mimicked the reluctant shuffle of the businessmen, even though he was anxious to see something. Like a chameleon, he adapted to his surroundings and blended in so effectively that Leeuwenberg didn’t notice that his tour group had increased by one. The man showed patience as Leeuwenberg took them by dingy ship models and exhibits that celebrated Holland’s past as a major maritime power. The only thing that raised even a flicker of interest in him was a model of Henry Hudson’s ship,
The Half Moon,
which the guide said was used to discover the Hudson River. The man had been in New York only a few days before.

His patience was rewarded when the group went into a section of the museum devoted to the Dutch presence in Nagasaki. In the 1600s the Dutch had a monopoly on access to Japan through a community in the port of Nagasaki. The museum had maps and artifacts depicting this community, including a model of the tiny island to which the Dutch community was confined. The island, made artificially rectangular by stone sea walls, was linked to the mainland by a single bridge. There was a guard tower at the mainland side that made the Dutch enclave look like what it was designed to be: a prison that would keep the corrupting European influence away from the people. In the five minutes the group spent at the exhibit, the man absorbed every detail, committing the placement of doors, windows, and cabinets to memory.

When the tour group returned to the museum lobby, Leeuwenberg meticulously counted them. He had the exact number he started with, and he had no hint that he had hosted an additional member during the tour. A few of the Japanese near the back of the group noticed that the stranger was missing, but none knew exactly when he had disappeared. Any lingering curiosity about the man vanished when Leeuwenberg suggested, “Would you gentlemen care to delete two museums from today’s tour and visit some Rotterdam cabarets? You can drink Dutch beer.” A ragged cheer of enthusiasm rose as Leeuwenberg’s statement was translated into Japanese and passed on.

Two hours later, the museum went through its normal closing routine. Two guards walked through the various rooms asking a few lingering members of the public to leave. One of the guards walked into the men’s room, looking under the stall doorways to see if he could see any shoes. Seeing nothing, he turned off the light and exited the men’s room, continuing his rounds.

The man was crouched on top of the toilet seat in a back stall. A schoolboy’s trick, but sometimes the simplest strategies are the best. He waited.

A few hours later, the door of the restroom opened. The man carefully looked down the darkened hall. There was no evidence of life. During his tour of the museum, the man had carefully noted there were no key boxes, which indicated there was no night watchman, so he was fairly confident he would not be disturbed. He stepped into the hallway and made his way towards the Nagasaki exhibit.

The object he was looking for was in a glass case near the model of the Dutch settlement. He pulled out a collection of lock picks and inserted one pick into the cabinet lock to make an exploratory probe. It was a simple lock and he felt the tumblers turn under a little pressure from the face of the pick. He wiggled the pick around, twisted, and the lock snapped open. He lifted the top of the glass case, reached inside, and took his prize. Then he relocked the case.

He walked to a window he had previously chosen. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a scrap of wire. He carefully wrapped the ends of the bare wire around the contacts for the alarm sensor guarding the window, shorting out the sensor and making it possible for him to open the window without setting off the alarm.

He took out a small flashlight and risked shining the light for a few seconds to make sure the wire was connected to the proper contacts. Then, on a whim, he extracted a length of string from another pocket and securely tied it to the wire that was shorting out the alarm system. When he was satisfied with the connections, he unlocked and opened the window. The alarm stayed silent.

He climbed through the window into an alley running behind the museum. He ran the string tied to the shorting wire outside with him and closed the window until it was almost fully shut. Then he tugged at the string until the shorting wire was worked off the alarm contacts and pulled outside through the narrow opening of the window. He shut the window the last fraction of an inch and used a flat piece of metal to poke up between the two parts of the window and swing the lock back in place. The man allowed himself a grin as he put the metal, wire, and string in his pocket. When the authorities discovered the theft, the locked cabinet and untripped alarm would give them something to puzzle over.

Looking both ways, he put the stolen object in a long brown paper sack and stuck it under his arm like a loaf of French bread. Nonchalantly, he walked out of the alley towards his rented car parked a few blocks away. He whistled a little tune as he walked, happy as any tourist.

A few hours later another man was whistling, but this time it was literally half a world away, in Tokyo, Japan. His whistling was an absentminded habit when his thoughts were absorbed by a problem. He was a tall man, wearing a wrinkled gray suit over a white knit shirt that was yellowed from neglect. His hair was closely cropped to his head and his skin was pockmarked. He walked towards the California Orange bar with a long loping gait, much like a wolf.

The bar was in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, and when he entered, it took a few seconds to let his eyes adjust to the dim lighting. The bar catered to students, and at thirty-eight, he was easily the oldest person in the establishment. Even the bartender looked young.

The walls were decorated with broad slashes of color and a long bar dominated the narrow room. It was early afternoon, but there were a dozen young people populating the room, mostly sitting in groups of three or four. The music coming over the sound system was a Japanese rap song and the older man curled his lip. Lately, four out of five top hits in Japan were rap songs, and the surrender to percussive cacophony offended him. He much preferred the traditional and melodic Japanese
enka
music.