Free Linnear 03 - White Ninja by Eric Van Lustbader

case is closed, I have another assignment for you. Have you heard of a man named Nicholas Linnear?'
    'Yes,' Tomi said. 'I think everyone in Tokyo has.'
    'Not just in Tokyo,' Senjin said cryptically. He turned to look at her. 'Well, Linnear-san is your new assignment. Surveille him at close range. Protect him.'
    'Sir?'
    'Wipe that look of astonishment off your face, Sergeant,' Senjin said, approaching her again. 'This morning we intercepted a coded Red Army transmission. Twenty minutes ago, the code was broken. Here's the message.' He handed her a sheet of flimsy, and when Tomi reached for it, her fingers brushed his. Momentarily, their eyes met. Then, hurriedly, Tomi concentrated on reading the message typed on the paper. While she was doing that, Senjin went on. 'It seems as if Linnear-san is the target
    of a Red Army termination directive. As you see, he is scheduled to be assassinated in one week's time.'
    The Shakushi furo was in Roppongi, that glittering section of Tokyo where the foreigner could feel not quite so alien, and any Japanese over the age of eighteen was distinctly uncomfortable. The bathhouse was, at least by Tokyo standards, not far from Nangi's office, along a side street bristling with avant-garde cafes and discos which by midnight would become the throbbing heart of the city. On the corner, across the street, was an audio-video department store whose fifteen-foot windows were made up entirely of synched television screens on which a pair of talentos were posturing in the manner that these days passed-for a performance. Talentos were that peculiar form of modern-day Japanese media star who had many talents but were master of none. They were like fads in clothing and hairstyle; they came and went in the blink of an eye.
    Inside the bathhouse, Nangi bought a numbered-key on an elastic band then, proceeding to the interior, began slowly to undress. This was not as easy for him as it was for most people. During the war, something had happened to the nerve synapses in his legs, making their movements jerky, seemingly semi-coordinated. Using his dragon-head cane, he carefully lowered his whippet-thin body on to the polished wooden bench that ran in front of the line of metal lockers.
    As he undressed, he wondered how Kusunda Ikusa would react to his face. No doubt Ikusa had been fully briefed. He would know about Nangi's right eye, the lid forever frozen half-open over a useless orb, clouded a milky blue-white. He might even have been shown a photograph of Nangi's face. But it. would be that first moment when Nangi peered with his good eye into Kusunda Ikusa's face that Nangi would know what this
    man was made of, and whether he could be bested in a psychological contest.
    Nangj sat very still for a moment. He longed for a cigarette. But on the day Seiichi Sato had been buried, Nangi had given up smoking. Not as a penance, but as an eternal reminder - like a flame above a brave soldier's grave - of his friend's spirit. Every time he longed for a smoke, he remembered Seiichi all over again. It had been Seiichi's older brother who, during the war, had sacrificed himself to save Nangi. Now, with Seiichi dead, no one other than Nangi himself knew that, not even Nicholas.
    Nangi remembered the Buddhist ceremony, hollow for him, said over Seiichi's grave, necessary in this land of Buddhists and Shinto spirits. He remembered saying a silent prayer in Latin as the joss sticks were lighted, and the priests began their singsong litany.
    Afterwards, emptying his silver cigarette case into a nearby trash bin, Nangi had taken the train back into Tokyo, and had found himself at his church instead of at his office.
    The war had changed Nangi in many ways: it had lost him an eye, the full use of his legs; it had cost him his best friend; but no outcome was more profound than his conversion to Catholicism. Drifting alone on a raft in the middle of the Pacific, with the sight of Gotaro's death still a fresh wound in his mind, he