Free Linnear 03 - White Ninja by Eric Van Lustbader Page A

had cast about for solace, and had found his own spirit wanting. God was not a concept recognized by either Buddhist or Shintoist, but God was what Nangi had needed during that time, and it was to God he had prayed. After the war, the first item he had sought out was a Bible.
    Years later, when Seiichi's funeral was over, Nangi had entered his church, sat in the confessional.
    'Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned...'
    He had felt calm then, composed. He had been sad, but God was with him, and he took solace in that
    thought But, sometimes, as now in the steam-filled bathhouse, Nangi had his doubts. He did not know whether Catholicism had made him stronger or weaker. It was'true that in times of trial his faith in God had buoyed him. But, at other moments, as now, he had begun to be concerned by his reliance on the rote of Catholic litany, the adherence to the gospel according to Rome. These things, too, had taken on a hollow ring. On the one hand, he understood that part of his faith meant subservience to God's will, and to the dictates of the Church; on the other hand, he sometimes felt much as a self-aware addict does, faced with the ascendancy of the outside force of the drug, that his own will was slowly seeping away. This frightened him.
    What was worse, he felt constrained from confessing his doubts to his priest. That alone, he knew, was a sin in itself. But he could not bring himself to admit to his failing, not with the doubt inside him that it was a failing at all. Did this mean that he had failed God, or that God had failed him?
    He did not know and, often now, he wondered if there was any difference between the two possibilities. In his confusion, he found it impossible to take communion, and this further increased his sense of isolation, of an almost Roman foreboding, a perception of a moral twilight falling upon him and those around him.
    Nangi's good eye refocused on the closed metal door in front of him. He brought his mind slowly back into the present. He centred, breathing deeply, knowing that he would need all his resources to face Kusunda Ikusa successfully.
    Naked, Nangi turned the key in the locker, slipped the key around his wrist. He leaned more heavily on his cane than he might normally have done were he not in a public place. He had learned long ago that a clever man could derive indirect benefits from his physical disabilities.
    The war hero was still a powerful image in Japan, and Nangi had put himself into the habit of exploiting every advantage he could.
    His good eye, in its odd triangular setting, blazed as he set off down the humid, tile-lined corridor. The floor was composed of wooden slats beneath which drains set in concrete leached away the water. The sound of his cane striking the slats echoed in the hallway.
    Inside a small chamber, a young woman took Nangi's cane and, as he sat beside a steaming tub, knelt to ladle water over him while another young woman soaped and scrubbed his body with an enormous natural sponge. He was sluiced with deliriously hot water.
    Cleaned - purified, the Shintoists would say - Nangi was helped to his feet, given back his cane, and directed out the other side of the room.
    Kusunda Ikusa was waiting for him.
    Nangi was stunned. He had been unprepared for how young Ikusa was. Certainly under thirty, a mere baby by Nangi's standards. Could one so young truly represent Nami and, by extension, the Emperor of Japan?
    Perhaps Ikusa had once been a sumo. His thickly-muscled legs were bowed beneath the weight of his wide frame. Great rolls of pale flesh cascaded in widening layers from beneath his arms to the tops of his thighs. But, for all that, he seemed as deadly and streamlined as a bullet.
    His head was hairless, dark and stippled over the sections of scalp where hair would have been. He had tiny, feminine ears and the kind of bowed mouth one often found on simpering geisha or female impersonators. But the coal-black eyes set like gems in that wide, suety face