Zero. Part 17

"Then what happened?" Ude asked.

"Are you going to kill me?"

Ude smiled. "Not if you tell me what I want to know."

The man swallowed, nodded. "I went over to the hea.r.s.e while she was signing the papers to get the casket through, and that's when I saw it. There was a hand-drawn map on the front seat. I leaned in. It showed the way to Hana.

There was a circle drawn around a spot in Hana. It was Fat Boy's house. The one he uses maybe once or twice a year, when he wants to get away from business and the family."

A casket being brought to Fat Boy's house? Ude thought. What was going on?

"Isn't Hana on the other side of the island? Very remote, very wild. Where exactly is this house?" The Hawaiian told him.

Ude thought it was time to take the hard edge off. "What has Fat Boy got going?"

"Oh, he doesn't know about this."

"How do you know that?" Ude asked.

"Because he's gotten lazy. He said he used to take care of the house himself.

Now he has us doing it. We were there not more than a couple of weeks ago, getting rid of the roaches. They come in from the mountains. But there was no electricity on, no water. Nothing. He was not expecting anyone."

Even more interesting, Ude thought. He considered. "Did you tell Fat Boy any of what you saw at the airport?"

"You mean with the woman? Not yet." Tears were streaming from the Hawaiian's eyes. "My brother said no. Fat Boy locked him outside-with the dogs, you know?

The Dober-mans. Ever since then, my brother hates Fat Boy. 'We take his money,' my brother says. That's all.' "

"Who was the driver?" Ude asked. "The woman?"

"I don't know," the man said. "Please! I've told you everything. Let me go!"

"All right," Ude said gently.

He crashed the edge of his hand into the Hawaiian's throat, then knelt down beside him. For a moment their eyes locked. The cricoid cartilage had ruptured. The Hawaiian began to suffocate.

Ude continued to stare into his face even though the Hawaiian's eyes, openedwide, were darting wildly here and there as if they were seeking escape from the inevitable.

With a kind of devotion, Ude's hands covered the Hawaiian's face. Now Ude spoke in j.a.panese, as if to his dead father. "You left your wife. You left your son. There was no time to make you pay for the suffering you caused those who once loved you.

Thumbs curling into claws. "Those."

Lifting away from the already graying flesh. "Who."

Ligaments raised as tension came into them. "Once."

Moving over the trembling eyelids. "Loved."

Thumbs plunging downward in concert with a scream.

The murderer's or the murdered's?

"You."

Ude, his forehead pressed against the Hawaiian's, was weeping.

"Father."

Two hours later, Ude was in Hana. There were no roaches left in the house, but there was something alive.

Or rather, someone.

Like a stone skipped across a lake, Michael was winging his way across the Pacific. The continental United States was behind him, but Uncle Sammy's words would not let him be.

Michael's mind was wrapped around the enigma that was Philip Doss.

Up swam a memory. Philip Doss coming to j.a.pan. To Tsuyo's school for Michael's graduation.

Michael saw his father enter the dojo, carrying a long, thin package wrapped in multicolored j.a.panese paper. Philip had come just in time. Michael was called to the center of the tatami mats. He, like all the other students, was garbed in padded suit and a mask with a metal grill over the face. This served as protection against the bokken, the wooden swords the students used.

"Tendo," Tsuyo said, "is the Way of heaven. It is the Way of truth. It is how we here live our lives. Tendo gives us our understanding... of the world around us... and of ourselves. If we do not grasp tendo, then we understand nothing."

Tsuyo moved to where Michael stood, handed him a bok-ken. He returned to his place at the edge of the mats.

"Understanding nothing, we are evil and will eventually slip into evil ways, whether or not we mean to. This is simply because in turning away from tendo, we have lost the ability to recognize the face of evil."

Two students, also armed with bokken, approached Michael from opposite sides.

They attacked in tandem as if acting on an unspoken cue.

But Michael was already in motion. This was what Tsuyo called the Zen chance.

He clashed his bokken against that of the first opponent, applying pressure in order to force the two weapons down and away from him.

At that instant he disengaged and, drifting to his left, brought his wooden sword in against the fists of the second student. Immediately, Michael attacked again and again, beating down the hastily erected defenses of the surprised pupil, until the bokken flew from his hands.

The first student had recovered sufficiently to race at Michael's back.

Michael twisted, narrowly missing a blow to his spine. He engaged, sword against sword.

As he did so, Tsuyo signed for a third armed student to attack. Tsuyo was standing, watching the action with a practiced eye. His hands grasped his steel katana. There was no expression on his face.

Michael felt the strike from his opponent all the way up his spine. He knew this boy well. He was an attacker. He was stronger than Michael, but perhaps not as determined.

The student held his bokken before him, made a rush at Michael. Michael held his sword end downward and slightly to his left. He let his opponent's blade come at him, moving at the last instant so that the student's momentum took him past Michael. Michael pivoted, slashing the boy across the back. Thestudent fell flat, his weapon rolling away from him.

Now the third student was almost upon Michael. As Michael turned, he saw that there was no defense, no offense he could offer. He was defeated. And he remembered the Zen saying "Beat the gra.s.s, surprise the snake." He threw down his sword.

For an instant, the third student did not understand the gesture, and he stopped. In that moment of indecision, Michael struck, using the edges of his hands in atemi, percussive blows, on the student's nerve meridians. The student collapsed.

Now Tsuyo strode to face Michael. He was in the ken-tai position, the master's battle stance. What could this mean? Another test? The a.s.sembled students held their breath.

Tsuyo attacked, and there was no time for thought. The steel blade whistled through the air toward the weaponless Michael.

Who reached out, capturing the katana's blade between the palms of his hands.

For the first time, Tsuyo smiled as he said, "It is always thus. Tendo, the Way of heaven, shows us the nature of evil. It shows us not only how to confront evil, but when."

Afterward, Philip spent the afternoon with his son. It was the first week of spring. In Yoshino, where Tsuyo's school was located, the hillsides were thick with cherry trees bursting into bloom. As they walked the country paths, tender white petals drifted about their faces like windblown snow.

"I came," Philip said, "not only to be at your graduation, but also to give you this." He handed over the wrapped package.

Michael opened it. The ancient katana glinted gold and silver in the sunlight.

"It's beautiful," Michael said, stunned.

"Yes. Isn't it," Philip said. "This was the sword made for Prince Yamato Takeru. It is very old, Mike. Very precious. There is a great responsibility in owning it. You have become its guardian, therefore you must take care of it every day of your life."

Michael began to withdraw it from its elaborate scabbard.

"It's as sharp now as it was on the day it was forged," Philip said. "Be careful. Use it to fight evil, only if you have to."

Michael looked up, a sudden intuition flooding him. "Is that why you sent me here, Dad? So I will be able to recognize evil?"

"Possibly," Philip Doss said thoughtfully. "But these days evil is adept at wrapping itself in many disguises."

"But I have tendo," Michael said. "The Way makes me strong. I have pa.s.sed all of Tsuyo's tests today."

Philip looked at his son, smiling sadly. "If those were the most difficult tests you will face," he said, "I'd be content." He ruffled Michael's hair.

"Still, I've done the best I can."

He turned, bringing them around so that they were headed back toward the dojo.

"Now you know that first you must recognize evil. Then you must combat it.

Finally, you must guard against becoming evil yourself."

"It's not that hard, Dad. I did it today. I stopped Tsuyo's attack without attacking him myself. I knew that he had no evil intent."

"Yes, Mikey, you did. And I'm proud of you. But knowing these things for certain gets harder the older you grow."

Audrey . . . Oh G.o.d! Poor Audrey! Michael thought now. He buried his face in his hands. His cheeks were wet with tears. He had not been able to recognize the evil that had come for Audrey. The magnificent katana that his father had entrusted to him could not save her. And in any case, now it was gone, too.

Where was Audrey now? Was she alive?

"Father," Michael whispered, "I swear on your grave that I'll find Audrey. I swear to you that I'll find whoever took her. I'll find whoever took the katana you gave me."

The shining bosom of the Pacific was flat and steely below the patches of thick c.u.mulus. It seemed infinitely peaceful, an entire world unto itself. At this moment it seemed to Michael to be impossible-and unfair-for there to beteeming civilization plunked down in the middle of it.

First you must recognize evil.

"Tendo. The Way of heaven is the path of righteousness." Tsuyo's voice echoed in his ear. "The Way of heaven is truth. Those who deviate from the Way have already embraced evil."

Then you must combat it.

"Your father sent you to me for one purpose," Tsuyo said on the first day they met. "To learn the Way. He wishes you to have the opportunity that he never could. Here in j.a.pan, there is a chance that you may learn. But first you must shed everything else in your life. If this seems distasteful to you, even harsh, so be it. The Way is difficult. The Way-not I, not you-will decide whether you are suited for this study."

Finally, you must guard against becoming evil yourself.

"The Way of heaven abhors weapons," Tsuyo said. "However, just as a gardener must rid his garden of weeds and vermin in order for the flowers he tends to grow, so there comes a time when the Way of heaven calls for eliminating destructive evil. The evil of one must be expunged so that ten thousand may live in peace and harmony. This, too, is the Way of heaven.

"Now you may think that the Way is everything. Yet defeat is possible even after you have come this far. Even a master of the discipline, a sensei such as myself, may know defeat. In that dread place where the Way cannot tread, where the Way is powerless.

"In zero."

Michael swallowed now, clearing his ears. With a b.u.mp, the plane was down. The jet engines screaming beyond the Perspex windows until the brakes took hold.

He looked out the window at palm fronds rippling and, beyond, the sapphire jewel of the Pacific Ocean.

Maui.

Michael was already in the air when Jonas entered the offices of General Sam Hadley. Hadley, in his eighties, had been retired from the Army for some years. But by special commission, he had retained his strategic advisory capacity to the president. It was not to the general's a.s.sistant that Jonas went, however, but to Lillian's.

The young major was a severe-faced man. He ran Lillian's section with a fierce compet.i.tiveness. He showed a serious lack of a sense of humor, but Lillian said that he could be forgiven that fault.

The major asked if Jonas would like coffee, Jonas a.s.sented, and it was brought into Lillian's office moments after Jonas himself had gone in.

Lillian had asked about Audrey as soon as Jonas arrived. But there was no news, nothing he could tell her that might give her some solace. She was controlled enough not to stay on the subject, and for this Jonas was grateful.

Now that he had sent Michael off following Philip's trail, he was uncomfortable in Lillian's presence. He knew that she would not take it well when she found out what he had had a hand in doing.

"I'm glad you could come," she said, trying to smile.

"It seemed important when you called," Jonas said.

They sat in the end of her office that was more like her home, away from the desk. There were no file cabinets, no credenza. But half her desk was taken up with a phalanx of phones that at a moment's notice could connect her with every area of the government, from the White House to the Pentagon to just about anyone on Capitol Hill. General Hadley's lines of power ran long and deep into the fertile soil, not only of Washington, but also of the major capitals of the world.

Over coffee, Jonas took a long hard look at Lillian. She wore a black dress.

She had abandoned all jewelry save her plain gold wedding band and a pair of diamond stud earrings Philip had given her for their tenth wedding anniversary.

"The vault is no place for jewelry, Lillian," Jonas observed.

"My memories are there," she said tonelessly. "My jewelry is no more beautiful than those." She stared at her left hand. "What I choose to wear now I do soout of necessity." As if there were no longer a place in her life for personal luxury.

"Philip is dead," he said gently.