The Samurai Strategy Part 66

"What in h.e.l.l." Henderson stared at Tam, then me. "Whose d.a.m.ned instructions?"

"Matt, what do you think's going on?" Tarn's fingers were still poised above the keyboard. "Why on earth would DNI Kyoto order a shutdown here?"

"That's a big question." One that had no answer. "Better just fake it, and fast."

"What else can we do?" She revolved back around to the keyboard and began to type.

Confirmation. What personnel remain?

Back came Tanaka's reply: As instructed, security personnel only.

"Tam, get off the line. This feels wrong."

She wheeled back again. Transmission concluded. Standby for further instruction.

Tanaka's reply was brief and to the point. A man of few words: Confirmed.

"Whatever's going on, we've got to get over there." I hit the speakerphone line again. "Artie, keep them jammed till five oh five.

That should do it. If we're not in by then, we're dead."

"You got it, boss," came back the voice. "Any longer, some gov'ment honkie's gonna put on a trace. Be our a.s.s. Correction, yo' a.s.s."

"Just pack up your gear and haul out of there. The FCC's the least of our problems at the moment."

"You the man. Down again soon?"

"Can't rule it out. Take care." I punched off the phone.

Tam was already headed for the door. Downstairs waited the car and driver we'd hired. No point trying to hail a cab in rush hour, particularly with so much depending on the next thirty minutes.

"Okay, Bill, keep that Shearson link up. Maybe it'll block anybody else from reaching DNI's message center." I was putting on my coat. "Where's that package?"

"Right here." He reached behind the bar and retrieved the one item I wanted with me when we confronted security. It was nicely wrapped in brown paper. "Look out for yourself, Walton. I got a few good drinkin'

years left. Be a shame to have to do it all by myself."

"Your guy ready?"

"Says he's on his way. Due here inside fifteen minutes."

Without further farewells we headed for the elevator.

The trip over brought forth various thoughts on what lay immediately ahead. For some reason I found myself remembering Yukio Mishima, who once voiced a very perceptive observation on the nature of swordsmanship. He claimed that the perfect stroke must be guided toward a void in s.p.a.ce, which, at that instant, your opponent's body will enter. In other words your enemy takes on the shape of that hollow s.p.a.ce you have envisioned, a.s.suming a form precisely identical with it.

How does that happen? It occurs only when both the timing and placement of a stroke are exactly perfect, when your choice of moment and the fluidity of your movement catch your opponent unawares. Which means you must have an intuitive sense of his impending action a fraction of a second before it becomes known to your, or his, rational mind. The ability to strike intuitively before your logical processes tell you your opponent's vulnerable moment has arrived requires a mystical knowledge unavailable to the left side of the brain, because by the time that perfect instant becomes known to your conscious mind, it has already pa.s.sed.

The point is, if you allow yourself to think before you strike, you blow it. Which is why one of the primary precepts of _bushido_ is "To strike when it is right to strike." Not before, not after, not when you rationally decide the moment has come, but when it is right. That moment, however, is impossible to antic.i.p.ate logically. It can only be sensed intuitively.

My intuition, as we rode the elevator up toward Dai Nippon's center of operations, was troubled. The offices had been cleared in advance of our arrival by somebody from DNI's Kyoto operation. We had struck at the proper void in s.p.a.ce, all right, but our opponent had deliberately created that opening. Things weren't supposed to happen that way.

Then the elevator light showed eleven and the door glided open. We were there. Before us lay the steel doors of The Kingdom. While Tam gave the computer a voice ID, I stood to the side readying the surprise I planned for Noda's security twosome. Off came the brown paper, then the scabbard, and in my hand gleamed a twelfth-century katana from the sword-smith who once served the Shogun Yoritomo Minamoto. The prize of my collection. It was, arguably, the most beautiful, sharpest, hardest piece of steel I had ever seen. With the spirit of the shoguns.

"Ready?" She glanced over as the doors slid open.

"Now."

Awaiting us just inside the first doors were the X-ray and metal detector, the latter a walk-through arch like you see in airports. Then past that were the second doors, beyond which were stationed the two Uzi-packing guards. The detector was set to automatically lock the second doors if metal was detected on the persons of those pa.s.sing through, and the wires leading out of it were encased in an aluminum tube, attached there on the left. This would have to be fast.

The sword was already up, poised, and as we entered, it flashed. Out went the electronic box with one clean stroke, the encased wires severed at the exact point where they exited from the gray metal. There was no alarm, not a sound. We'd iced it.

Beautiful.

I figured there would be time for exactly two more strokes, but they had to be right, intuitively perfect. So at that moment I shut down my rational mind, took a deep breath, and gave my life to Zen. Mental autopilot.

The connecting doors slid open, and there stood the guards. We'd caught them both flat-footed. So far, so good. Now the sword . . .

Yukio Mishima, whom I mentioned earlier, once a.s.serted that opposites brought to their logical extremes eventually come to resemble one another, that life is in fact a great circle. Therefore, whenever things appear to diverge, they are actually on a path that brings them back together--an idea of unity captured visually in the image of the snake swallowing its own tail. According to him there is a realm wherein the spirit and the flesh, the sensual and the rational, the yin and yang, all join. But to achieve this ultimate convergence you must probe the edge, take your body and mind to the farthest limits.

I'd been reflecting considerably on what this meant to us. Noda's two heavies personified brute physicality, the body triumphant; Tam and I were meeting them with the power of the mind and, I hoped, finely honed intuition. Whereas these may seem the farthest of opposites, as with the symbol of the snake, they merged at their extremities. They became one. I knew it and the two startled guys now staring at us understood it as well. Mind and body were about to intersect. The circle had joined.

Their Uzis--about two feet long, black, heavy clip, metal stock--were hanging loosely from shoulder straps several inches away from their hands. I saw them both reach for the grip, but that sight didn't really register. My cognitive processes were already shut down.

While the first man's left-hemisphere neurons were telling his right hand to reach downward, the sword was already moving, milliseconds ahead. It caught the gun's heavy leather strap, parting it like paper, and the Uzi dropped, just eluding his fingers. He stood naked.

That was all for him and he immediately knew it. If you're looking at a razor-sharp _katana_, you don't get a fallback try. However, the second guard, dark eyebrows and bald head, now had time on his side. Up came the automatic, one-handed.

Right here let me say you've got to admire his pluck. If I'd been staring at a four-foot katana that could have bisected me like a noodle, I might have elected to pa.s.s. But he'd weighed the odds and concluded he had a chance. Again, though, his rationality bought us time. The neurons firing in his brain were setting in motion a sequence of logic. He was thinking.

The sword wasn't. My blank mind was centered on the void, the place where the Uzi would be when it was leveled at my chest. The overhead stroke caught it just where intuition said it would be, point-blank, his finger a millimeter from the trigger.

Cheap Israeli steel. The eight-hundred-year-old katana of Yoritomo Minamoto's swordsmith parted the Uzi's perforated black barrel like Hotel Bar b.u.t.ter, bifurcated it into identical slices. Guard number two just grunted as it clattered to the floor.

By my reckoning we'd been in the inner chamber for about three quarters of a second, but Noda's two human mountains were now standing there holding nothing but time in their hands. n.o.body had to draw them a picture. The game was over. _Bushido_.

I motioned Tam toward the first guard's weapon.

"Matthew . . ." She hesitated a moment, then snapped into action. "You weren't kidding about that sword. I never realized--"

"Let's go."

"Right." She now had the one remaining automatic. The other was no longer usable. Didn't matter. One was all we needed.

We now had to kill the automatic ID on the outer door and put it on manual. Otherwise the two guards upstairs might come calling. While Tam stood there with the Uzi, I went back out and yanked the wires that hooked the voice reader to the computer. There was probably a scientific way to turn it off, but who had time for science? Besides, just then my veins were still pumping pure adrenaline. Facing the business end of an Uzi, even for a fleeting instant, is no way to begin an evening.

Tam ordered the guards to open the last door and in we marched. Tanaka was standing outside his office, his dark eyes glazed, his bristle- covered skull rosy with shock. He turned even redder when he saw the _katana_. n.o.body had to tell him what it could do.

"Mr. Walton, why are you here?"

"We're about to undertake some corporate restructuring."