TULKU A Tale of Modern Ninja!

>
>THE MATSUTANI FAMILY
>
>Kaisen Matsutani-Masakado Tokuoka: original founder of the Matsutani family and ninjutsu
tradition.
>Takezo Matsutani-early twentieth-century head of family, grandfather to Hitoshi
>Keikichl Matsutani-postwar head of family, son of Takezo, father to Hitoshi
>Hitoshi Matsutani-current head of family, chairman of the board, Matsutani Shoji Ltd.
>Kozo Matsutani-younger brother of Hitoshi.
>Hideo Matsutani-son of Hitoshi, president of Matsutani Shoji Ltd.
>Toru Kitagawa-cousin of Hitoshi, chief trainer of clandestine operatives.
>Emi Kitagawa-niece of Toru, special assistant to Director of Field Projects Operations.
>Kenichi Odate-ninja operative, Matsutani Shoji Ltd.
>Teruo Ozawa-Director of Field Projects Operations Matsutani clandestine operations group.
>Barbara Nishimura-ninja operative, Matsutani Shoji Ltd.
>Seiji Iwate-ninja operative, Matsutani Shoji Ltd.
>Taichi Nakamura-ninja operative, Matsutani Shoji Ltd., Seoul, Korea.
>Toshiro Kando-ninja operative, Matsutani Shoji Ltd., Hong Kong.
>
>
>Part One
>
>AICHI NAKAMURA PURSED HIS thin lips and blew quietly and slowly across the
exposed ridge of brick to the right of his face. The bits of dust that had collected there over
the years clouded up in a tiny swirl and then fluttered slowly to the weed-split concrete paving
three stories below. From his position deep in the shadowed corner where the north office wall
jutted out to form the new wing of the jaejun International warehouse, Nakamura could see
the glimmer of the dust motes in the mercury vapor floodlights off to his right as the minute
particles of grit, aged brick, and mortar took to the winds. Slowly, almost leisurely, the sinewy
Japanese reached out with his right hand to brush the remaining particles away from the crack
between the bricks with his fingertips. His left hand and the skyhook loop stirrups beneath his
feet held him to the wall like a spider. Nakamura gently moved his right skyhook into place
along the brittle yellow edge of the brick.
>Nakamura hoisted himself up the cool surface of the wall another fourteen inches. He felt no
need to hurry. It was yet another forty eight minutes before the internal security patrol would
be encountering the distraction that had been planned for them, far from where the Japanese
climber would be entering their building.
>The Seoul night air was still, the civilian curfew having driven all but police patrols and
privileged government partiers into their homes hours ago. Nakamura was well used to nights
such as this, and he blended his breathing and muscular contraction and relaxation-even the
timbre of his mental processes-with the subtle vibrations that made up the predawn hours of
the October morning. He repeated the blowing, brushing, and reblowing procedure with his
left hand and lifted the small L-shaped scaling tool that climbers called the skyhook up and
onto its new and higher anchor. The three-inch spine of the hardened steel L pointed
earthward and extended down to the nylon webbing band that looped beneath, forming the
foothold that permitted Nakamura to cling snugly to the wall in a manner perpendicular to the
force of gravity.

>The deft scaler used the pointed tip of a tsubogiri boring tool, pulled from the packet on his
belt, to pierce the wooden surface of the roof that extended out over his head a full four feet.
Into the carved opening in the structural beam, Nakamura twisted a threaded eyebolt, to which
he clipped another loop of nylon webbing which supported him out and then over the edge of
the gently sloping roof.
>Nakamura flattened into the ridges of the clay tile and scurried noiselessly upward, the hands
and feet of his powerful thin limbs holding him just off the surface beneath his stomach as he
moved in the black trough of shadow that lay at the base of the ridge line. When he reached
the weathered caulking that sealed a sheet metal ventilator hood against the tiles that wedged
up beside it, he sprawled in alert rest, first checking the digital watch strapped to his left wrist,
and then closing his eyes to listen for continued stillness. Like the great gray starfish that
flattened themselves against the sandy bottom of the shallow lagoon beneath the rocky
shoreline of Koshiki Island, his boyhood home, Nakamura released all tension from his body
and melted into the gritty surface of the warehouse roof to wait.
>
>Wordlessly, Kyong Te Choi turned away from night security chief Park who, as always, sat
like a permanent fixture behind the pale-green laminated countertop that housed the closed
circuit television monitor. Choi repeated the night's security access code in his mind, his lips
moving in silent mimic of the jumble of letters and digits as he walked down the fluorescentlighted corridor. As usual, Hyun Woong Park had written the access code on a small white
square of paper, held it up in front of Choi's face for twelve seconds, and then slipped it
through a countertop slot to the shredder below. The light electronic whirring of the blades
that forever eradicated Park's penciled letters and digits faded in Choi's cars as he moved
through the building to the fire door leading to the stairwell that would take him up to the rear
emergency exit leading from the jaejun executive offices.
>The white plastic card with its magnetic strips and embossed numeric codes was still warm
from its slot in the encoding cradle as the roving guard pressed the succession of keys that
permitted the steel plate covering the card slot to lift upward. Choi pushed the stiff card into
the lighted slot and entered the second string of letters and digits.
>To the guard's surprise, there was no buzzing snap from behind the white-enameled steel
door that closed off the executive offices. For the first time in seventeen months of making
these rounds, Choi stood looking at a locked door after entering the card and codes that should
have automatically pulled the frame bolts back from their slots to give him access to the duty
stations beyond. The security guard stood motionless in front of the illuminated keypad,
confusion and then doubt flooding his mind. Had the access codes been entered incorrectly?
Had he mentally transposed a number or letter in tonight's code? Had there been a
malfunction in the Relex 5500 system, as impossible as that seemed?
>A startled Hyun Woong Park looked up as monitor EX12 beeped for his attention and then
displayed the Korean and English lettering indicating that entrance to the executive offices
had been attempted and denied. Behind the flashing message script, Park could see an
overhead front view of the motionless Choi staring at the electronic security station that had
produced the discreet alarm
>and now refused to return his access card.
>Park quickly scanned the other glowing screens and saw that all other stations seemed to be
undisturbed. He keyed in a program code that assured the building's general system monitor
recorder, Choi's frozen executive door station, and the jaejun compound security chief in
Building 6 that the incident was now in the process of being investigated.
>
>From his rooftop position, Nakamura could see all the way across the slumbering city of
Seoul. Far off in front of him, where the predawn sky met the lift of Namsan Hill, he could

make out the blinking of the aircraft warning beacons atop Seoul Tower. His attention was
suddenly drawn to tiny illuminated digits as they fluttered across the flat square screen he held
in his hand. The brief light from the silent signals gave the intruder's motionless face a
demonic red glow for the seconds it took Hyun Woong Park's program message to be
transmitted over their FM band to the security offices across the compound. Nakamura then
slipped the receiver back into its worn cigarette case and shifted silently into a kneeling
position, where he could grab the handle of the kunai leverage tool that he had jammed under
the lip of the ventilator screen.
>
>Nakamura knew that within moments the internal monitor screens would be unmatched as
the two guards changed places to allow Park to run up to the frozen entry panel, enter the
release code to retrieve the impounded magnetic card, and attempt the entry once again in
Choi's place. The Japanese took a deep breath, pressed the front of his torso up against the
ventilator hood as tightly as possible to muffle as much of the noise as he could, and pulled up
and out on the kunai. With a dull snapping thud, the rivets inside the hood released their hold
and the screen was free.
>
>The voice from the speaker on the raw concrete wall of the fire escape stairwell was brief,
instructing Choi to return to the monitor desk. As though being shaken from a daze, the
Korean looked around in all directions before turning on his heels and running down the stairs
to the underground console of his superior. Choi had barely reached the counter before Park
had leapt to his feet to fly back down the moss green carpeting of the corridor to the stairwell,
the wall displays of color photo panels depicting the jaejun heavy industry products but a
single formless blur in the corners of his upturned eyes.
>
>Nakamura entered the ventilator shaft feet first and used his knees and the heels of his hightopped, rubber-soled climbing shoes to wedge himself into place while he secured the curved
talons of the folding hook against the corner of the screen opening. Nakamura then allowed
several yards of the soft climbing cord to play out and down between his angled thighs, being
careful to use the slow and rhythmical movements that would reduce the chances of the rope
accidentally thumping against the walls of the narrow air shaft. Slipping his right hand into
the first loop that dangled from the rope and releasing his left-hand grip on the hood opening,
Nakamura moved into the jaejun structure.
>
>Park worked the keypad of the Eigo Keibi Relex 5500 security panel. In painfully slow
motion, the captured access card appeared at the edge of its slot and then backed out into
Park's waiting hand. The shift supervisor pulled the card the rest of the way out, rekeyed the
original access code, replaced the card, and again keyed in the second string of digital entries.
Choi hunched forward in Park's chair behind the monitor banks to watch for the results on
screen EX12. Beads of perspiration had popped out on the small Korean's brow and upper lip.
>Even if both Choi and Park had been watching monitor KLOI, they would have seen nothing
more than what probably would have been unnoticed as a blip of visual static in the dim grayelectric shadows of the upper left corner of the screen as Nakamura angled open the ventilator
filter cover, flattened himself out like a log on the painted concrete floor, and rolled slowly
beneath the infrared beam that stretched invisibly at knee height in front of the locked
doorway to conceal himself behind a skid loaded with boxed hydraulic cylinders. Nakamura
had slithered through the ducts and panels in the walls of the jaejun warehouse to emerge in
the cargo bay he was required to explore.
>Park swore inaudibly as the usual buzzing snap released the Relex 5500 electronic lock and
permitted the bulletproof steel door to swing inward to give access to the executive offices.

The fool Choi would now cost him what the senior guard felt would seem like endless
paperwork to follow up the snag in routine patrolling. Park stared up burningly at the closed
circuit camera above his face and pulled the door shut again with a booming slam. Choi
withered in his superior's console chair as he watched the entire proceedings over the monitor.
>
>From beneath the panning camera that scanned his corner of the cargo storage area,
Nakamura reached up from out of sight and gently rotated the tension knob on the camera's
mounting bracket.
>
>The slowing of the panning motion would not be noticed over the monitor, and it would give
the Japanese additional seconds to cover the unscanned areas of the bay that the dragging
camera would now leave temporarily uncovered.
>Nakamura moved noiselessly from crate to crate, keeping careful watch on the path of the
halting camera overhead as he pressed the small sensor against one rough wooden panel after
another. As he moved like a formless shadow over the concrete floor, Nakamura noticed an
oddly uncharacteristic edge to his movements and thoughts, an indescribable cold pressure
that seemed to drill at the back of his head.
>
>The hesitancy troubled him. He was, after all, a seasoned professional. He knew his quarry
was in here. His contact Sun Duk Chung had told him exactly where and when the shipment
would be moving through her station's repacking and relabeling process before being shuttled
on through camouflaged channels to its eventual destination. It was merely a matter of time
before he found what he was looking for and could take the photographs that he had been
charged with obtaining.
>Seven minutes into the search, Nakamura's hand-held sensor provided the LED signal for
which he had been waiting. He had found a crate that betrayed just the right magnetic
potential and gaseous content. Looking up to check the camera position once again,
Nakamura pulled out the long narrow kunai, and resolutely set to work on the crate lid.
>
>In another part of the warehouse complex, Choi drifted sullenly from one checkpoint station
to the next, moving on the nervous energy produced from inwardly directed anger. The jaejun
International executives took their security seriously, he knew, and one slip was all that was
required to be reassigned to one of the lesser posts that paid lesser hourly rates. How could he
have let himself slip? How could he have allowed himself to become so complacent? This
would have to be considered a lesson, a reminder of what can happen when one reaches
beyond reasonable limits in ambition, Choi resolved to himself.
>
>From his canvas sling high up on the catwalk that angled through the rafters of export bay
KLOI, the source of Nakamura's subconscious unease stared down at his narrow muscular
back as he hunched over the open crate to photograph its contents.
>The tiny shielded flash from Nakamura's miniature camera flickered like distant heat
lightning in the darkness of the warehouse and gleamed in reflection on the depthless black
eyes under the heavy lids that furrowed the middle of the broad flat face, which looked down
with infinite patience at the scene unfolding below. Though II Nam Kwon wore his usual
Chinese-built Makarov Type 59 9mm pistol, the Korean assassin made no attempt whatsoever
to stop Nakamura. Take your bit of cheese and run, my little rat, thought the hulking II Nam
Kwon, and when you slip into your cranny in the wall, this cat will know exactly where all the
killing is to be done.
>
>

>Chapter 2
>
>ROM THE STEELY GRAY tumble of the early morning autumn clouds that skirted the
eastern edges of the Shimabara Peninsula, the Mitsubishi Diamond One jet appeared, dropped
slightly in its path, and banked north over the Tenmei shoreline seawall. Few of the dozens of
seaweed farmers that plied the waters of the Ariake Sea were not looking up at the cream
colored jet. It was not a routine flight path, and the sight and sound of the sleek aircraft
captured the curiosity of the residents of the rural Hotaku province.
>The attention was but momentary in duration, however. Doryoku, consistent effort, was the
key to a successful planting, and within minutes all had forgotten the peculiar anomaly of the
jet over their ageless harvesting pool as backs and arms went on with the work of reeling out
and adjusting the seedling nets.
>Toru Kitagawa slowly pressed his face against the coolness of the small window in the side
of the Diamond One and looked back at the tiny fleet of broad-hulled boats at float on the
mirror surface of the water below. Those harvesters had been there long before his birth
almost sixty years ago west of Iga, and would still be there long after his ashes had turned to
earth under the base of his family's burial shrine in Akame. Theirs was a life so different from
the one that had been dealt to him, the stony Japanese acknowledged silently to himself.
Those sea harvesters worked along in harmony with the seasons to earn their way. Old Toru
the battler, more often than not, was expected to rearrange the seasons to earn his way.
> Kitagawa, a compact wiry man with close-cropped salt-and pepper hair and a face tanned
and creased like a worn leather armchair, turned his brown eyes away from the window and
glanced up at the digital clock. Ten minutes and he'd be back on the ground and then the nasty
task of delivering the prints to his cousin, Hitoshi Matsutani. As always, here's Toru with the
bad news.
> Toru Kitagawa looked down at the half-eaten persimmon in his right hand. The edges of the
gnawed area had begun to turn brown in the time that he had allowed his mind to drift.
Kitagawa lifted the fruit to his mouth and devoured it in two bites. He worked his teeth
through the sweet orange flesh of the kaki to separate the large smooth pits, which he dropped
into his cupped right hand. His eyes searched the seat area distractedly for a moment and then
he finally shoved his right hand into the side pocket of his windbreaker and deposited the
persimmon pits there.
> Kitagawa returned his gaze to the autumn reds and golds of the trees far below the Plexiglas
window beside his left shoulder. There was the forested peak of Kimbozan Mountain, with its
Reigendo cave that was the final home of Miyamoto Musashi. The legendary seventeenthcentury sword saint had dictated his Gorin no Sho (Book of Five Rings) to his last student in
that cave. What a wasted life, grumbled Toru Kitagawa to himself Shinmen Musashi of
Miyamoto, lone wandering warrior in the age of enforced peace during the Tokugawa family's
dictatorial rule. How like my karma, eh, Shinmen?
>Emi Kitagawa completed her report and returned the slim gold Cross pen to the inner pocket
of her wine-colored blazer. Her comments were written out in the dark-blue, self-locking
message tablet that indicated its contents were gokuhi, so confidential that only Teruo Ozawa,
the Matsutani Shoji corporate Director of Field Project Operations, was to break its seals.
> It had been Emi Kitagawa's job to enter the computer codes into the digital radio transmitter
that had been used for the remote reprogramming of the jaejun security system. All of their
Eigo Keibi Company security system control centers around the world contained that
additional chip to permit the off-site emergency rearrangement of any client's operating
system without, of course, the client having any means of determining the rearrangements as
being due to anything more than user error.

>Emi could feel the Mitsubishi slow in its descent and she knew that they would be landing at
Kumamoto International Airport within minutes. She looked across the narrow aisle at her
uncle. He was sitting with his body turned to the left in his seat, face pressed against the tiny
window. She noticed he had pulled his left leg up to where his ankle encountered the back of
his right knee in front of the blue upholstery of the seat. He shifted his foot there for a second
before returning it to the floor, all in a seemingly unconscious play as he stared out the
window.
>A discreet smile played across Emi's lips as she watched her uncle without his knowing it.
She was touched at the significance of the small futile action. She knew that her uncle had
grown uncomfortable in his seat on the flight back from Korea, and had reflexively attempted
to fold his legs up into the more familiar traditional Japanese seiza kneeling position without
really being aware of it.
>Toru-ojisan, she reflected silently with affection, ever the true Iga-mono, the last of a dying
breed of ninja phantom warriors left over from what the current generation referred to as the
"old school."
>With a short smoky chirp, the tires of the small jet hit the sun bleached concrete of the
Kumamoto runway. jumpsuited ground crews with acoustical sound mufflers over their ears
and bright orange directional wands in each hand guided the jet through the maze of taxiways
and ramps to rest in the private hangar of the Matsutani Trading Company. The usual black
Nissan Century sedan was waiting next to the jet's parking bay, ready to speed the two
travelers into the city and on to their appointment with the chairman of the board of Matsutani
Shoji Ltd.
>Saito, the driver, a small reedy man with a toothy smile and a set of mirror sunglasses that
concealed half his face, placed Toru's tight canvas duffel and Emi's lavender American
Tourister set in the cavernous trunk of the Century and came around the massive rubber rear
bumper guard to close the elder Kitagawa's door for him. In the Japanese fashion, Emi pulled
her own door closed as Saito took his position behind the wheel on the right-hand side of the
gleaming black sedan.
>The senior Kitagawa relaxed into the white linen slipcovers that stretched across the gray
fabric of the rear seat and hugged the thick manila envelop to his chest inside the front of his
jacket. Toru himself carried the photographs, developed only hours ago by his niece in the
chemical baths of Taichi Nakamura's darkroom in their safehouse on the edge of central
Seoul. Nakamura, Matsutani's active agent-on-call for the southern portion of the Korean land
mass had done his usual flawless work. Fluent in Korean and two dialects of Chinese, in
addition to his native Japanese, the dependable operative had been personally trained by
Kitagawa in the ninja arts that had been handed down from generation to generation in the
Matsutani family for the past eight and a half centuries.
>By the time the chauffeured sedan pulled onto the Kyushu jukan Doro eastern bypass that
would carry them into Kumamoto's central business district, the morning commuter traffic
had thinned. Toru scanned the scenery that flew by outside the heavily tinted passenger
window. This new and wildly garish strip of restaurants, cabarets, and pay-by-the-hour "love
hotels" still registered as unreal in Toru Kitagawa's eyes. After the Matsutani family had
vanished from their native Iga to reemerge quietly under a new public identity in Kumamoto
during the hectic and confusing times following the war, old Takezo Matsutani had taken
possession of huge tracts of this deserted Goryo district land that nobody seemed to want.
Takezo's grandson Hitoshi, the current head of the family and now chairman of the board of
japan's seventh largest trading and holding company, had later deftly sold the land in small
parcels after the construction of the new Kumamoto International Airport. No one in the
family could say how Takezo, in his early eighties at the time, had come to own the land. All

that was known was the fact that twenty-five years later Takezo's grandson had converted the
purchase into one more minor fortune in the family's already impressive treasury.
>We have become a faml'ly of merchants, mused Toru Kitagawa grumpily from his seat in the
moving sedan. Such a far cry from the centuries of warrior living that characterized the
Matsutani ninja ryu of japan's south central Iga region. Founded by outcast samurai Masakado
Tokuoka of the Matsutani district in the harsh mountain ridges of japan's northern joshinetsu
Plateau, their clandestine family tradition had developed as the only possible means of
survival in a seemingly endless era of civil warfare. Because of the circumstances of their
ancestor Masakado's alliance with the unfortunate Taira family during the Minamoto family's
rise to eventual supremacy over all of Japan in the late I 100s, those who later came to take
the name of Matsutani were forced to carve out livelihoods in the barely habitable regions of
desolate Iga, southeast of the old Heian-kyo capital in Kyoto.
>
>Stripped of honor, title, and family, Masakado became a political refugee and had to wander
in despair throughout the pine-covered peaks and lowland marshes of haunted Iga, far from
those who would hunt him down for martial vengeance. There in Iga, the forbidden tract said
to be inhabited by wandering religious fanatics and the descendants of those who had escaped
the chaos following the collapse of the T'ang kingdom in far-off China, he had vowed to
extend his life in search of the transcendent knowledge that would free him from enslavement
to the insanities of warfare that so ran the lives of others.
>
>Tokuoka had eventually discovered, or had been discovered by, the hermit wizard Yugen
Doshi. A sennin wilderness ascetic who dwelled in the mist-shrouded peaks of the upper Kil
Peninsula, the doshi possessed the mystical knowledge of the occult arts of cc accomplishing
that which is willed by means of invisible action." Having nothing left to lose and nowhere
else to flee, Masakado Tokuoka became apprentice to the powerful hermit sorceror of
Kasumigakure Mountain.
>
>As the years passed, the warrior Masakado gradually gained the skills necessary to employ
his magical mentor's methods for exploring the mysterious realms that lay beyond the limits
of the physical body. Masakado Tokuoka came to the realization that he had, in reality, long
ago given up the restrictions of the conventional combatant's outlook on the proper attainment
of victories. The now-transformed battler had become an enlightened holy warrior, towering
over the lesser realities with his feet planted firmly in the rocks below and his eyes gazing out
at the cosmos above. The transcendent Masakado had then assumed the new name of Kaisen
Matsutani, in commemoration of his roots in the Matsutani region far to the north, and in
celebration of his spiritual transformation into a warrior of the diamond scepter will.
>The descendants of Kaisen Matsutani had gone on to establish the Matsutani ryu of ninjutsu,
the warrior art of stealth and combat accomplishment, harmonious alliance with the forces of
nature, and the ability to transform visualized will into physical reality. As ninja phantom
warriors, they had embodied the cultural opposite of the bold samurai warriors' politically
assigned honor. Legally prohibited from engaging in socially acceptable modes of righteous
warfare, the Matsutani ninja had relied on subtlety and illusion to accomplish their aims. The
rugged and forbidding terrain of Iga had become the Matsutani family's fortress, and the
mountains southeast of holy Nara had eventually come to shelter the bones and ashes left
behind by dozens of generations of Matsutani warriors of the twilight.
>
>The chauffeured black Nissan Century joined the congestion of traffic that circled around the
imposing white and gray edifice of Kumamoto Castle. Looming high above the central
business district of modern Kumamoto, the castle stood as a silent reminder of the past glory

of the ruling Hosokawa family that had dominated this side of the Kyushu land mass until the
middle of the nineteenth century. As with so many other historical structures in contemporary
Japan, the castle that was once a seat of total power had been transformed into a cultural
museum filled with schoolchildren peering at pale souvenirs from an age that was now just a
distant and meaningless memory.
>The Kitagawas' driver took them laterally across the city to pass by the pigeon-clustered
Hanabata Park with its imposing statue of the sixteenth-century warrior Kiyomasa Kato, the
tiger killer who had ruled the area for the Toyotomi family's military dictatorship. The
polished black sedan turned on to Toricho Dori and followed the crowded street all the way to
the broad circular drive that arched gracefully up to the glass reception doors of the nine-story
Matsutani Shoji headquarters building.
>Emi Kitagawa glanced to her right at her dozing uncle, who slumped with his shoulder
against the door in the seat beside her. A gentle smile filled the lower portion of her attractive
face, and the large gold-and-maroon-highlighted eyes narrowed with the upturn of her lips.
The younger members of the Field Project Operations action squad had nicknamed her
father's brother tengu, "the winged demon," in honor of the terror he inspired in the hearts of
the Matsutani ryu operatives by merely showing up at a training exercise. To Emi, however,
her Uncle Toru was someone special, taking the place of the father she had known for such a
short time. Though gruff on the outside in others eyes, Toru had shown her a softer side in
those difficult years of growing up after her parents' deaths.
>
>The driver had barely gotten his hand on the rear door handle when Toru popped his eyes
open and sat up straight. Clutching the large envelope to his chest, he was out of the car, up
the steps, and through the door in an instant. Toru Kitagawa had disappeared into the lobby
before the startled Saito had even gotten halfway up the stairs in the futile attempt to open the
door for the returning Matsutani agent.
>Emi laughed quietly to herself as she stepped out onto the spotless concrete of the driveway
and straightened the high ruffled collar at her throat. If there was one person in this world who
dearly loved his job no matter how difficult and frustrating the duties could make his life, it
was her uncle Toru.
>
>
>DR. ISAO MURATA LEANED over the top of the low bookcase that held the massive
collection of his bound research notes, as well as the medical encyclopedias that he rarely
consulted anymore. Things moved so fast in the world of medicine, that one season's state of
the art was next season's antiquity. The fifty-year-old doctor raised his reading glasses above
his bushy eyebrows and peered out the third-story office window to silently study the snarled
traffic and jostling bodies in the parking lot below him.
>
>The admitting wing of the Matsutani Cancer Research Clinic, a privately funded branch of
the Kumamoto University Medical School, was a bustle of fast action and shouted commands.
Television news crews from around Japan and southeast Asia had arrived early to work all
morning at setting up the electrical cables, lightreflector umbrellas, and camera dollies that
would permit them to transmit their touching story across the globe. As the technical crews
completed their wiring and camera-testing chores, interviewers and announcers from
competing networks and stations took the last few moments to ready themselves for their onair narratives.
>Chief of research Murata looked down on the dozen close cropped Tibetan heads that
seemed to float on a sea of marooncowled shoulders that churned about in the parking lot
below. At the fringe of the Tibetan cluster, a circle of shaved heads moved on the black-robed

bodies of the visiting Japanese monks who had arrived to welcome and comfort their brothers
of the spirit.
>As though all were operating as a single unit, in the same manner as one tree bending in the
wind is actually composed of countless independent branches moving alongside of one
another, the parking lot crowd suddenly turned in unison and parted to permit the approaching
van to move from the driveway up to the admitting door staircase. The special guest, for
whom the Matsutani Clinic had offered to make available all of their latest research and
fastbreaking developments, had arrived exactly on time.
>The Tibetan and Japanese monks moved into position with their two lines forming a kind of
tunnel through the press of the crowd and aligning with the side door of the silver Toyota van.
Dr. Koichi Araki, the chief of staff for the research clinic, and Dr. Naohiro Ishijima moved up
to the van between the lines of holy men and pulled the sliding panel door back to welcome
their revered guest.
>From the depths of the van appeared two thin figures clad in the red-brown robes of the
Tibetan religious tradition. These two were in turn followed by a third, more burly figure
swathed in the same style maroon body shawl. This third figure commanded deep bows of
greeting from the other monks, both Tibetan and Japanese, as he was assisted to his feet. With
a pleasant smile lifting the cheeks of his wide sun-browned countenance, he turned from side
to side with his right hand lifted palm forward in blessing and greeting, occasionally reaching
out to touch lightly some of the bowing heads that bobbed up and down before him.
>After a brief but sufficiently respectful interval, the waiting news reporters crowded around
the large Tibetan. Microphones stabbed in at the robed figure and his similarly draped
interpreter, and cameramen bearing their electronic eyesight on their right shoulders shifted,
swayed, and jockeyed in competition for the most advantageous recording angles.
>Dr. Murata left his window and walked across the gray linoleum tile of his tiny office, the
image from this first sight of his famous patient still lingering in his mind. Isao Murata knew
that he and his clinic were being asked to do the impossible. Dr. Araki himself had said as
much last week after reading over the reports telexed to him from Chicago by Dr. Winston
Clarke. They would, however, offer all that they could out of respect for their guest. And of
course, this would be no small public relations coup in the medical world having their clinic
singled out and exposed to all this publicity that would eventually find itself transmitted
across the wire services of the globe.
>
> Murata felt the slightest twinge of guilt. Before even meeting their patient, his mind had
latched onto thoughts of publicity, and the possible contributions that could be derived from
the public's attention to this hopeless case. Alas, Murata had learned long ago that the
idealism of the fresh young medical researcher is soon tarnished in the shadow of financial
reality. Without funding, no progress is possible in the lab. Without the cultivation of those
who could contribute to their cause, no funding would ever be brought forward.
>Chief of research Murata descended the tiled staircase to join his colleagues on the ground
floor of the Matsutani Clinic admitting wing and welcome the arriving visitors. The beigewalled lobby was a spectacle of churning color. White-coated medical staff personnel moved
among the maroon-robed Tibetan crowd, through which passed black-cloaked Japanese
monks with their golden yellow kesa shoulder sashes.
>
>Four of the Tibetan monks, the youngest members of the entourage, remained in the
reception lobby to wait. Swathed in the voluminous maroon robes and tight golden shirts of
their Himalayan country's religious tradition, the four created quite a contrast with the rest of
the Japanese families that waited in sweaters of subdued grays and dark blues for visits with
patients undergoing treatment in the clinic.

>In the privacy of the ward that had been provided for their guest and his attendants, Dr.
Murata bowed in welcome to the semicircle of Tibetans before him, and then to his own
personal mentor Koichi Araki.
>His holiness the Gyelsop Rimpoche, the twelfth reincarnation of the bodhisattva Aizen,
cosmic saint of the "all-piercing wisdom that manifests itself as stern love," was rapidly dying
of cancer. The revered Tibetan holy man had been jetted first to Geneva, then to Chicago, and
now at last to Kumamoto for treatment. Here in the Matsutani Cancer Research Clinic of
Kumamoto University, the high lama would undergo therapy. Head of one of Tibet's five
major Buddhist lineages, the fifty-eight-year-old holy man had been diagnosed as terminal.
The lama, was not, however, looking for miracle cures. What he really wanted was an
extension of the inevitable. The Gyelsop Rimpoche was buying time.
>The Rimpoche had no fear of death whatsoever. The pain he experienced ever more
regularly now was a distraction sometimes, but even the pain was not to be feared or loathed.
One accepted what one had created in the endless karmic wheel of existences, and continued
to strive for ever higher attainments of the enlightened Buddha consciousness in each lifetime.
What the lama did experience as the slightest of regrets was the fleeting speed at which he
moved from this life while there was so much more to be taught, so much more to be shared,
so much more yet to be given.
>His holiness would cheerfully remind the collection of disciples who accompanied him from
his exile residence in Sikkim that his own stretch of days should serve as an example for all.
From the limited scope of our human perspective, there is never enough time, never enough
time. The monks would all return his smile, nodding wordlessly in agreement with their
spiritual master, and then quickly look away at the walls or the ceiling through tear-filled
eyes.
>The lama's interpreter had stepped forward to speak with the director of the clinic. The sixtyyear-old interpreting monk, an angular, bony little man wrapped in the traditional maroon
cloak over a maroon vest that buttoned across a bright yellow shirt, spoke amazingly fluent
Japanese. Dr. Araki had been prepared to discuss his Tibetan patient's situation in English or
French perhaps, but was delighted to find the interpreter comfortable in the doctor's own
native Nihongo.
>The small interpreter seemed to be a spirited character, with twinkling eyes that reached out
from a red-brown face fringed with ragged short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He went by the
name of Thangme, he told them, and said that he had spent considerable time in Japan during
his youth. That explained the man's disconcerting expertise in a language that the Japanese
doctors imagined would be one of the least likely to be practiced in the Himalayan stretches
of the Forbidden Kingdom of Bod.
>Thangme the interpreter expressed his superior's gratitude for the clinic director's ready and
open acceptance. Much, indeed all of life, had changed in the years since his holiness and his
retinue had escaped the fall of Tibet at the brutal hands of the Communist Chinese in the
spring of 1959. Today, they were privileged to have the advantages of the western world's
latest developments in the fields of disease research and treatment, whereas three decades ago
no such advances were available to the isolated Tibetan population.
>Though be had chosen to retain the traditional red robes of his country's Buddl2ist monastic
tradition, and he was accompanied by his personal Tibetan physician from the medicine
school on Tshagpuri, the Gyelsop Rimpoche had adapted well to life in the modern western
world. jets took him across the face of the globe, where once only sandaled feet took him
from his spartan quarters in the towering Potala holy fortress to his duties in the cavernous
Tsug Lag Khang temple in central Lhasa. Dinners of fresh vegetables, tender fish, and soft
breads had long since replaced the dusky butter tea and tsampa gruel that had constituted his
staple diet on the barren plains of eastern Tibet. These clinics in Switzerland, the United

States, and Japan had taken the place of the prayer flags, amulets, and shaman's cries that had
implored heaven for the restoration of fading health during the tens of generations preceding
him in feudal Bod, as the Tibetans referred to their own country in their language.
>
>To assist the Tibetan holy men in feeling more at home in these foreign surroundings that
were to be their home for what were, in all reality, probably the Rimpoche's last days, the
three Japanese doctors offered to provide a guided tour of the facilities. The barrel chested
Tibetan lama, who from all outward appearances seemed to be the least likely looking
candidate for the dissipating death that he was diagnosed as undergoing, agreed heartily to the
tour. Interpreter and attendants in tow, the doctors and their esteemed patient moved through
the doorway and down the polished tile floor of the ward's central corridor.
>As a means of beginning the story, Dr. Araki pointed out that the clinic had been named after
Kiku Matsutani, grandmother of the founding sponsor of their research institute. Thangme the
interpreter, previously quite proficient at shifting between the Japanese and Tibetan
languages, had experienced what to Dr. Murata had seemed to be an uncharacteristic difficulty
in relaying the name of the woman to his spiritual guide. The mother of their patron's father
had died of bone cancer shortly after the war, it was explained. The heir to the wealthy
Matsutani family trading empire had created the clinic as a memorial tribute to his deceased
grandmother in the early 1970s.
>The Rimpoche stopped at the bed of a tiny girl playing on her covers with a collection of
plastic miniature robot characters. The little one looked up from her colorful toys with a wan
smile that exposed a gap in the normal dental lineup. How touchingly ironic, the holy man
thought. The inevitability of her dreaded disease would prevent this child from living to see
another new year celebration, and yet those remaining healthy parts of her body continued on
as though larger teeth, longer eyelashes, and rosier cheeks were required right on schedule.
>A toothless scarecrow of a grandmother, her narrow back bent into a permanent ninetydegree crook from too many years of stooping over to plant young rice stalk seedlings, smiled
up at the Tibetan from her position next to her granddaughter. The little girl's name was Mie,
she offered.
>Thangme the interpreter translated the old one's words for his holy charge, explaining that
the name Mie meant "blessed three times" in the Japanese language.
>The Gyelsop Rimpoche looked down with compassion on the tiny Mie and then reached out
with his right hand to gently brush back the short black bangs that covered her forehead. He
asked his translator to tell the grandmother that he had added blessing number four to the
initial three.
>Thangme's face had twisted into an embarrassed smile, and there had been an awkward
pause. He had finally bowed slightly to the old woman and told her that the Tibetan holy man
had wished her granddaughter comfort.
>His holiness the Rimpoche was of course new to Japan, and unfamiliar with the customs and
superstitions of these people. How was he to know that the number four was pronounced with
the same spoken sound as another less fortuitous word in the Japanese language? The
coincidence in pronunciation was considered to be such a dire omen that even elevator panels
in the land of the Rising Sun were constructed to omit a fourth floor from their listings of
stories. In the vernacular of the Japanese, the spoken shi could be taken to mean "death," just
as well as "four."
>
>ITOSHI MATSUTANI PRESSED the palms of his broad hands against each other, and then
lowered his chin to rest atop his extended index fingers.
>"Muzukashikunaruzo. " This will be difficult, quietly affirmed Hitoshi through teeth that did
not quite separate as he spoke.

>Toru Kitagawa scowled and nodded wordlessly from his position in front of Matsutani's
burled walnut desktop.
>Matsutani again lowered his eyes to the twelve 8 X 10 color photographs that were spread
out before him on the top of the huge executive desk. Some of the photographs showed the
side panels of the wooden crates with their false shipping destinations and equally false
contents registers. Other photographs showed direct overhead views of the grim contents
themselves.
>Hitoshi stood, still looking down at the photographs, and then walked around the side of his
desk, the fingers of his left hand drumming the wooden surface while his right hand lifted, the
index finger extended to touch his lips lightly. The sun-browned Kitagawa recognized the
pose as his cousin's contemplation gesture. It was one that Toru the battler, the family's
saikoshihan chief instructor and curriculum supervisor for the training of clandestine agents
for twenty-three years, had come to see often on his visits when delivering bad news.
>Hitoshi ambled wordlessly about his spacious office, his mind engaged. His heavily lidded
eyes were like sheltered bunkers, behind which silent observers took in all without the
vulnerability of exposure. The dark pupils moved first, latched onto their target, and then the
mighty head turned slowly on the stout neck to align the face with the object to be studied. No
one spoke.
>Looking inward from the double doors that opened into the office, visitors could see a broad
expanse of gray-green tatami rice straw matting beyond a ten-foot apron of pale green
carpeting. At the far edge of the tatami, frosted glass panels in a blond wooden framework of
stacked rectangles created a partial wall that descended from the ceiling to approximately
waist height. Barely visible beneath the lower edge of the translucent glass shoji panels could
be seen the hint of green moss and clump ferns, out of which grew the twisted trunks of dwarf
pines and crimson maples. It was easy for first-time visitors to the office of the chairman of
the board of Matsutani Shoji Ltd. to forget that they were on the ninth floor of a business
tower in the city center of Kumamoto, and that they were actually looking out on an illusion
created by a penthouse rooftop garden.
>By turning to the right inside the doors to the office, the visitor could view a traditional
Japanese tokonoma alcove arrangement. A tall bulbous vase held an upright sheaf of river
reeds and cattails, above which stretched a hanging gold silk scroll. The Japanese kanji
characters for "After the ten thousandth triumph, yet a beginner" were boldly brushed in black
ink on the white silk strip down the center. Though the lettering was too heavily done and
reflected too much a feeling of imposing discipline to have been considered a valuable work
of shodo calligraphy art, the scroll was nonetheless a priceless souvenir in the eyes of Hitoshi
Matsutani. The lettering had been done by his younger brother Kozo, over forty years ago,
before the younger Matsutani had been consumed by the imperial Japanese war machine.
Since Kozo's body had never been recovered, the scroll served as his memorial in the grieving
heart of his older brother.
>In the expansive carpeted space to the left of the doors was situated Matsutani's working
office. Massive hand-built walnut furniture imported from northern Italy reflected the
sophistication that the businesses of Japan were rapidly adopting as they progressed into the
international twentieth century.
>Ensconced in the deep maroon folds of a large leather wing chair, Emi Kitagawa used the
slim gold cylinder of her pen to move a thick wave of black hair from where it lay on her
cheek to a position draped over her shoulder. She elegantly crossed one long leg over the
other at the knee, the sunlight from the window catching the fine golden threads woven into
the length of her hosiery. Emi silently observed the board chairman as he stood in front of the
window looking out over the ancient castle city of Kumamoto.

>Hitoshi Matsutani was a handsome man in the seasoned, mature fashion that Emi's nightclub
set referred to as shibui. Even at sixtyfive, Hitoshi continued to radiate the kind of vital life
energy one associated with younger men still engaged in the sport of carving out territories for
themselves in the business world. Emi studied the way the man carried himself, observed the
way his gray tailored suit fit his waist and shoulders perfectly, and waited for the moment
when her uncle's cousin would turn and announce his decision.
>Hitoshi asked rather than announced, "We have no intelligence indicating whether these are
Russian or Chinese exports, then?"
>"No, unfortunately none at all. It was coincidence alone that we were able to find out even
this much. A Korean contact of our man in Seoul just happened to overhear her supervisor
instruct a shipping foreman to inform him of a certain series of crates that were to be brought
to his attention. The Korean girl became suspicious because her section chief is a part of their
legal staff. He shouldn't have anything to do with the physical handling of goods under
normal circumstances." Teruo Ozawa spoke from his position between the two Kitagawa
agents. His square face was boxed in with roughly brushed black hair, and his crooked smile
revealed a single gold tooth tucked in the lower corner of his mouth. Ozawa was an
intelligence professional in every sense of the word, having grown up in the Matsutani
family's web under the guidance of his father Katsuji Ozawa, the Matsutani's Chief of Special
Projects before him.
>"But we are sure that these are being shipped to the Ladakh range?" queried the iron-haired
board chairman silhouetted in front of the window.
>"That is certain," Ozawa answered. "By way of Hong Kong and Delhi. They are to be
repainted in Seoul and moved on disguised as part of a shipment of welding equipment for the
construction site."
>
>The key to effective use of intelligence gathering lies in the ability to successfully analyze
the data procured, Ozawa often emphasized to his subordinates who carried out the field work
under his direction. That was the weak point of many of the world's major intelligence
organizations. No one could top the American CIA in terms of ability to get information.
What the Americans lacked, Ozawa felt, was the ability to use that information to predict
accurately the likely future in order to initiate appropriate actions.
>Matsutani was in his swivel chair behind the broad desktop again. With those hooded eyes
peering forward and spine erect, he looked to his three agents like the image of the huge,
towering seated Buddha that peered down in all-knowing wisdom upon the tourists in seaside
Kamakura.
>The statue spoke: "The girl in Korea, is she still trying to come up with additional
information, or has she been compromised getting this much to us?"
>"Well, we'll have to wait and see. Our man Nakamura is the one who cultivated her. She is
karima kunoichi, hired because of her sensitive position of access, and not one of our own
shimma kunoichi female agents. Nakamura says she will get back to him as soon as she picks
up anything new. He says that she will also let him know of any changes in her position at
jaejun International."
>Toru Kitagawa spoke for the first time since entering the board chairman's office. "It is
always dangerous using these outside agents. So much that we don't know about could come
into play."
>There was nothing that any of the other three could say to refute the elder Kitagawa's words.
Sometimes risks had to be taken to assure a long-range position of security. Such was the
nature of their uncertain world.
>"If what you have proposed is indeed the case, we could be up against the most difficult
threat that Matsutani Shoji has ever encountered. We need to move quickly to gain control

here. I'll need scenario proposals. By this evening. Work with your staff and devote full
attention to your scenarios while I meet with Hideo. I want him fully involved with this, from
today onward."
>Hitoshi moved his steady gaze from one set of eyes to the next in unspoken search of further
question or comment. The three agents in front of him silently returned his gaze. "That is all
for now then. Yoshi, ike.
>
>Matsutani moved as though to stand up. His three agents quickly jumped to their feet to
execute a bow of departure before their chairman could bow to them first.
>The graceful Emi Kitagawa turned quietly to pull the door closed behind them as the three
left the office. She saw that Hitoshi Matsutani was once again sitting in his molded plywood
executive chair, assiduously studying the color prints that still lay on the desktop before him.
>
>It was exactly three o'clock to the minute when Hitoshi Matsutani heard the quiet chime. The
chairman of the board of Matsutani Shoji walked directly to his desk and pressed his intercom
activator.
>"Hai?"
>"Your son Hideo is here to see you, sit. As you had requested." The soft formal tones of the
disembodied female voice seemed to emanate from all parts of the room.
>"Yes, that's fine. Please have him enter."
>The left panel of the massive double-door entryway to the Matsutani office opened
noiselessly. The athletic frame of Hideo Matsutani moved sideways into the office and then
paused for the slightest of bows from the hips.
>Hideo was a handsome man by international standards. Somewhat taller than most Japanese
males of his generation, Hideo Matsutani was forty-one, but could have passed for a man of
much younger age. Elegantly at home in his dark blue Cardin wool suit and white starched
shirt, Hideo was also equally comfortable in the mountain climbing gear that he enjoyed
donning in those brief periods he allowed himself away from his office.
>"Shitsureishimas, Kaicho. You said that you wanted to see me anytime after three o'clock?"
>How like his son, thought Hitoshi Matsutani. Anytime after three o'clock had meant to him
one second after three. Was his punctuality out of politeness or out of the astute knowledge
that the sooner one is on the scene, the sooner one has a head start over others?
>Hitoshi motioned toward the lone chair that faced his desk. "Ma, suwarinasai. "
>
>Hideo Matsutani, the newly appointed president of Matsutani Shoji Ltd., had been groomed
for his eventual position in the family dynasty since birth. A graduate of the Harvard Business
School, Hideo now was the chief executive officer of Matsutani Trading, Matsutani Refining,
Matsutani Microelectronics, Matsutani Energy Resources; along with his duties as supervising
director of the Matsutani family corporation's controlling stock in Matsutani USA Inc.,
Matsutani Deutschland GmbH, Matsutani SA, Eigo Keibi Electronic Security, Dragon Sky
Trading, and Transseas Freight. The companies for which Hideo had inherited the leadership
dealt with the distribution of everything from soup noodles to missile guidance systems, and
touched the lives of consumers on every continent including Antarctica.
>I wanted to talk with you about the energy project we are completing for the government of
India," began the elder Matsutani.
>Fine, fine. I was there in Ladakh myself three weeks ago, on the way back from Cairo. I
would be happy to give you any information I have."
>Hitoshi paused momentarily and then looked directly at his son. "Actually, there are some
developments that I must explain to you.
>Hideo continued to stare at his father wordlessly.

>"I've had Ozawa and his people researching a few puzzling irregularities for us."
>Hideo's tanned face tilted back slightly as he took in a full breath of air through his nostrils.
His lips remained clamped shut and his eyes riveted on his father. Ozawa and his phantoms
again. Hideo's goal was to take his family dynasty fully into the legitimate twentieth-century
international business community, but his father persisted in operating as though they were
still the underground Matsutani ninja ryu, clandestinely ferreting out bits of rumor to assist
them in resisting the oppression of warlord conquerors who had ceased to be a threat over
three hundred years ago. What terrifying plot had they discovered or concocted, and hidden
from him, this time?
>"And?" prompted Hideo wearily but politely.
>Hitoshi knew that this was an awkward loss of face for his son. Hideo was in title the chief
executive officer of the corporation, and in matters of routine business growth he was doing a
remarkable job. Hitoshi had retained very few formal duties when the position had been
handed down, and he had complete faith in Hideo's future. There were just a few aspects of
family business, however, for which Hideo had yet to be prepared. Teruo Ozawa and the
Matsutani family's Field Project Operations group were one such aspect. The senior Hitoshi
alone called the shots when it came to engaging the Matsutani family's ninja.
>"And it seems that we are in for some very difficult political maneuvering."
>The elder Matsutani continued his explanation without waiting for any comment from his
son. "When we began negotiation with the government of Kashmir, we knew that there would
be certain potential risks in the joint venture to produce the passive energy generation plant.
With ownership of the Jammu and Kashmir states still in dispute between India and Pakistan,
we had anticipated difficulties. Despite the Indian government's efforts to set state boundaries
in such a way as to conform to their major ethnic groups, there is much dissatisfaction among
some of the population. It is a far different story from our Japan, which is made up entirely of
one race, one single culture.
>"There was talk of possible religious and political terrorist actions as ways for local
dissidents to attract attention. The very nature of the project, however, the production of
energy through the harnessing of natural nonpetroleum geological phenomena, would be of
such value to the entire region that it was felt that the risks of locals working against us would
be minimal. We also have been keeping the extent of our involvement somewhat of a mystery
so that the project is diminished in value as a target for international attention."
>Hideo interrupted what seemed to be a pause. "We are working through the informal
network of local village panchayat councils in the region. Several of the project construction
foremen are members of the councils in their villages. During my visit to the site, Rama Rao
gave me an update on their work. They have been discreetly scouting for possible trouble
while at the same time creating a feeling of positive acceptance and cooperation among the
local factions. I feel confident that we are doing a solid job of monitoring and guiding local
sentiments."
>Hideo wished to assure his father that he, too, appreciated the value of intelligence
gathering. Where he differed from his father was with what seemed to be the elder Matsutani's
easy reliance on what were, in Hideo's view, strong-arm tactics not much above those
employed by the Japanese yakuza and other powerful crime syndicates around the world. The
new corporate president firmly believed that the only way to build trust and respect in the
eyes of the rest of the Japanese business world was to sever completely any remaining strings
that bound them to the unfortunate methods that had been necessities in the past.
>"Yes," mirrored the elder Matsutani, "the local tensions seem to have been clearly
anticipated and carefully taken into hand. What was not foreseen, however, is a recent
development in international terrorist blackmail schemes."

>Two faint chimes sounded from somewhere near the door of the chairman's office. Hitoshi
and Hideo both looked up to watch Noriko the secretary enter the room with the tea
preparations ' Neither man spoke, though Hideo was now bursting to explore his father's
cryptic comment.
>With a delicate, barely audible "Shitsureishimas," the tiny Noriko placed a lacquered maroon
tray on the edge of the senior Matsutani's desktop. Deft and well-trained hands poured
scalding water from a tall thermos flagon over chopped and dried green tea leaves in a round
white ceramic pot. The contents were swirled momentarily and then poured into translucent
handleless cups on wooden saucers, which were placed first before Hideo (the guest) and then
secondly before Hitoshi (the host). Within mere moments, the secretary had appeared,
prepared the tea, and then vanished.
>Hideo ignored the cup before him and launched into the conversation immediately. "Terrorist
blackmail? What do you mean by that?"
>"Well, a form of blackmail, one might say." Hitoshi swiveled around to the credenza behind
him and opened a drawer as he spoke. "Do you remember hearing about the tragedy in
Chandral, at the American Centride chemical works in central India? Thousands died ghastly
deaths overnight by poison gas contamination, and a hundred thousand were left blinded or
maimed for life. A huge white cloud of deadly methyl isocyanate was accidentally released
into the winds as an oversight by a maintenance worker." The senior Matsutani turned back to
his desk with a manila envelope in his hands.
>Hideo nodded affirmatively without speaking, his curiosity piqued by the envelope his father
held.
>Hitoshi continued, "You may also recall that the landslide of lawsuits totaling over 15 billion
U.S. dollars in compensatory and punitive damages following the tragedy forced the
American Centride Company to abandon totally their entire Indian subsidiary. The local
courts even had warrants out for the arrest of the chief officers of the American parent
company if any of them showed their faces in India. The lawsuits and venomous public
attitude toward them in their own country almost took the parent corporation under. I
understand that they are just barely solvent now as a result.
>"What was referred to as a grievance committee quickly put together a corporation under
Indian law and took over the facility for the purpose, as their spokesman described it, of
'protecting and serving the welfare of the Chandral community.' This tragedy and subsequent
takeover occurred after the American company had invested a vast amount of their resources,
engineers, and technology to complete the project. So, in effect, the new owners had their
capitalization task done for them as a multimillion-dollar gift.
>"Of course, the American owners were still recoiling from the terrible beating they had taken
in the American press. The Americans do seem to be their own harshest critics, especially
when it comes to their corporations' dealings with what they refer to as the third world.' They
seem always to search for some sort of exploitation scandal to feel guilty about. There was no
way that anyone would listen to American Centride's potential counterclaim that they had
been set up as a target. They did not even attempt a counterclaim."
>"Yes, Kaicho, we knew that the project in Kashmir involved certain, well, risks when we
began the plans. But our facilities will have no toxic chemicals whatsoever on hand. All
energy is being derived through a blend of alternating geothermal, wind, and solar processes.
That is the beauty of it. There is no possible chance for pollution, exploitation of people or
natural resources, or damage to the surrounding area."
>"Yes, that is true, as the project follows our plans. However, we have come upon some
intelligence that indicates to us that the Indian grievance committee I mentioned earlier has
some disturbing ties with an unsavory international network of political and economic
manipulators, and that they have some designs of their own for our Ladakh project."

>"Who are these people? What can they do to interfere with what is an entirely benign
construction?"
>Hitoshi leaned forward and stretched to reach all the way across the broad expanse of
walnut. He held out the manila envelope that Toru Kitagawa had delivered to him just hours
earlier. "We do not know who they are yet. But they do seem intent on importing their own
trouble if we do not have the right ingredients on hand."
>Hideo dumped the contents of the envelope into his lap and picked up the cover sheet to read
over a listing of shipping destinations, dates, name changes, and routing cautions, all written
out in Korean hangul, Japanese kanji, and English scripts. Hideo then flipped from photo print
to photo print, his alarm growing.
>Clearly displayed and labeled in their shipping crates were canister after canister of deadly
phosgene gas. Each obscene yellow cylinder contained enough nerve gas to snuff out the lives
of hundreds of people. Judging from the number of cylinders indicated in the photographs, the
unknown agents bringing the shipment to the Matsutani site in Ladakh seemed to have in
mind the complete eradication of the population of an entire stretch of the Himalaya
Mountains.
>
>Chapter 5
>
>KENICHI ODATE DREAMED OF seeing Cynthia again. It had been August when they
were together last. She had flown in from Queensland during a break in filming. Ken had
been halfway surprised, but then he had halfway expected her to attempt to surprise him by
showing up unexpectedly. They had devoted four full days to snorkeling in the Ariake Sea
waters of Yurigahama Beach and five full nights to making love like there would be no
tomorrow.
>In the dream, Cynthia's hair was white blonde. That was its natural shade, the color it had
been when he had first discovered her the year before in the tiny Saxon curry restaurant in
Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district. Last August, however, her hair had been dyed red
brown for a film. Cynthia had pranced about their borrowed one-room cottage wearing
nothing but a white lace choker around her throat, her hair swept up on top of her head and
pulled into a Victorian knot.
>From his position on the rumpled futon sleeping quilts on the tatami mat floor, Ken had
teased her that whoever had done the work on her hair had been negligent in making sure that
her lower locks matched. Cynthia had then bowed her legs outward and bent over in an
exaggerated attempt to view her own crotch. She had gasped and lifted her hands in mock
surprise, and grinned over at the supine Ken Odate with that musical laugh of hers.
Outrageous. The woman is outrageous, Ken had wailed as he flipped over onto his flat
muscular stomach and buried his face in the barley hull stuffing of the little Japanese pillow.
>
>In the dream, Ken Odate saw himself walking among thatched roof Japanese sea cottages
with the Australian film actress. As with so many dreams, however, the scene in which Ken
saw himself was not the actual location of his frolic with Cynthia Woodcroft those two
months ago. Instead of seeing the two of them on the Yurigahama shore on the coast of
Amakusa Island, he could make out their dream surroundings to be the tiny Kuroshima island
village in which he had been born twenty-two years before. Ken had lived in the seacoast
village off the shore of Kyushu's Fukuoka with his mother and her sea harvester parents for
the first six years of his life. After that, his widowed mother, still a very young woman at the
time, had taken him to Kumamoto further south on the western coast of Kyushu to live with
the family of her new husband.

>As with the dreamscape that had been transformed from Yurigahama to Kuro Island, the
peaches and cream face of Cynthia Woodcroft had been transmuted by the dream into the
serene olive countenance of his mother. An incredible beauty, she had experienced a brief
career as a film actress in the United States, only to leave what she called the madness of
Hollywood and return to the familiar and simpler life of an abalone diver in her native village
on the southernmost of Japans four principal islands.
>It was sunset in the dream, and screaming, wheeling seabirds dipped and circled in the reds
and oranges of the western sky beyond the tumbled peaks that shadowed the village. Ken saw
himself as the tiny boy reaching out to his returning mother as her wooden skiff made its way
across the last stretch of the dark choppy water that lapped onto the rocky shore at his feet.
She was wet and naked beneath the thin brown summer kimono she had donned at the end of
her diving day, and she hugged her robe to her as she smiled and waved and called out across
the water to him.
>In the dream, Ken found himself startled and confused by a shout and a sudden explosive
pain that drove deep into his stomach. Waking, he brought his hands up to his midsection and
crumpled forward struggling for breath.
>
>Chuck McKee pulled his leg back from the knee and swung the black polished toe of his
Corcoran paratroop boot into the stomach of the sleeping figure on the floor for a second time.
Again, he roared the command "Up!" in English just as his foot hit the body of the Japanese
security trainee in front of him.
>Ken struggled to get his wits about him as he burst from slumber. He had to remember that
to these people he was Kenichi Suzuki, a security guard supervisor for some unknown
Japanese industrial firm, and he spoke little or no English.
>The burly man in camouflage fatigues reached down and grabbed a handful of the trembling
figure's black hair, and pulled to assist his victim onto his feet. McKee's job was to be as
rough as possible without actually doing permanent damage. The job was tougher than ' usual
this time. It just was, not that much fun, because as McKee himself put it, "This Sukiyaki, or
whatever his name is, is such a fucking wimp."
> Come on, time to head out to the pisser," boomed the camouflage-clad jailer. "Go now or
forever hold your piece." He held a sound-suppressed, flat black .45-caliber Ingram machine
gun next to his right hip, pulling down on the shoulder strap to retain the compact automatic
snugly in place for aiming. Actually, there was no real need to even think of aiming. The
pitiful Japanese prisoner had been more than cooperative for the entire forty-nine hours they
had been holding him while McKee's group scoured the territory for his accomplices.
>The big Westerner led his meek prisoner across the floor of the utility shed that served as
their detention center. The silent Japanese wore a gray uniform and heavy black construction
worker's shoes. He could be seen to bow ever so slightly from the shoulders as he passed in
front of the two guards who lounged at a card table covered with red-and-white striped
Kentucky Fried Chicken carryout boxes. The guards were still laughing lazily at McKee's
terrible pun.
>"Be back soon. Don't you all go any place without me now," jested McKee in the tones of
one who was only doing his job, a job that demanded far less than he was capable of taking
on. The two bored guards in their camouflaged uniforms grinned up at McKee and shook their
heads in mock disgust as he moved by.
>The blue-and-white fiberglass shell of the portable latrine had been set up at the edge of the
woods one hundred feet to the rear of the utility shed. A narrow dirt trail was already
beginning to appear in the closely mowed lawn that stretched between the tall, narrow cabinet
and the detention center. Behind the latrine stretched hundreds of acres of ravine-rutted
Indiana hardwood forest. Somewhere to the east lay the Ohio state line.

>The servile "Suzuki" was lead to the stall and observed as he entered the structure and pulled
the flimsy door closed behind him. His guard took advantage of the moment to scan the open
lawn that surrounded the farm buildings his group had been hired to watch. McKee took his
time looking around, partly out of concern for possible invaders who could move in to free his
captive, and partly out of joy in seeing the brilliant reds and golds of the leaves surrounding
their temporary camp. He had never before realized how much he missed autumn foliage
since relocating to an Arizona base to continue his profession.
>McKee slowly grew aware of the length of time his prisoner had remained in the toilet stall.
He began to wonder if the skinny Japanese was all right, and then suddenly had a flash of fear
that the captive could have hanged himself in there. That happened sometimes. These
untrained guys would just fall apart under the strain, lose touch with reality, and try something
stupid in order to get it all over with. McKee rapped on the fiberglass with the tip of his
Ingram silencer and called out in as clear English as possible, "Hey! You okay in there? You
okay?"
>There was no response whatsoever.
>McKee quickly ripped open the door. The inside of the coffinshaped structure was
completely empty.
>The big man in the woodland camouflage fatigues stared incredulously into the empty
interior. There was no way the Japanese could have gotten out. McKee himself had stood in
front of the door the whole time, and the other three walls were molded as a single unit. He
would have heard if the guy had ripped open a panel to get out. How could a man just vanish
into thin air like that?
>In shock, McKee stepped into the portable toilet cabinet and looked around, although there
really was nowhere that his captive could have hidden. His mind awhirl, without really
thinking rationally, he found himself looking over at both side walls, up at the ceiling, and
down at the plastic toilet seat in front of him as though the Japanese somehow could have
been hiding in plain sight.
>He distractedly raised the toilet seat and was blasted in the face with a silent explosion of
slimy mud, excrement, and soggy paper. Roaring and hissing in horror and disgust, the guard
lifted his hands frantically and clawed at the reeking muck that choked his eyes, nostrils, and
lips. "Aw shit! Aw shit!" shrieked the enraged guard, totally oblivious to the ironic nature of
his curses.
>The guard staggered backward in a furious attempt to escape his hellish confines, but the
latrine walls somehow followed along as he moved. The cabinet was toppling over on him, he
suddenly realized, and he would be pinned in position on his back with his weight holding the
door shut beneath him. McKee groped savagely for the Ingram, lost now in the tangle of its
black web sling and the rumpled folds of his battle jacket. In his heart, he knew that he had
just "bought the farm," as they used to say in the backwater eddies of Viet Nam.
>Ken scrambled briskly from the latrine pit with the low crawl of an alligator moving onto the
shore. Within heartbeats, he had wedged his shoulder against the side of the cabinet and
flipped the structure over to where its door opened upward. Aware that his captor might have
been waiting inside with his finger on the trigger of the Ingram, Ken moved to a position
above the ceiling panel of the box, where McKee would least likely suspect him to be.
>Sunlight burst into the sealed blackness of the coffin as Odate ripped open the door. McKee
was still struggling to gain control of his machine gun, but immediately ceased the attempt
and punched up at the face of the man he thought of as Suzuki.
>Ken's trained fists blasted McKee's rising arms out of the way with powerful koppojutsu
blows, and then applied a left-handed boshiken thumb drive against the muscles that sheltered
the blood flow up the right side of the neck to the mercenary's brain. McKee brought his

battered arms up to his throat in hopes of relieving the pressure that he knew would take him
out in a matter of seconds.
>With his free right hand, Ken reached down to the top of the hissing guard's right boot to
extract the double-edged Gerber commando knife. Over the past two days, the prisoner had
noticed that his tormentor always carried the knife tucked away there. McKee had forgotten
the dagger in the pressure and confusion of the struggle.
>In perfect Midwestern colloquial English, Odate whispered, "You blew it, tiger. Game's over
for you. Bye!"
>The grime-encrusted face lurched upward in bewilderment and terror as Ken rocked the edge
of the boot knife across the large man's windpipe. Wide eyes still staring straight up, the body
of the powerful mercenary slumped to rest on the dung-spattered back wall of the upended
outhouse.
>Odate leaped from the open box with a low flying dive. In two tumbling rolls, he
disappeared into the low growth that lead to the forest behind the prison farm. Within minutes,
he vanished into the underbrush and barked columns of the beech, maples, and hawthornes
that had, over the centuries, sheltered the warrior braves of the Miami, Shawnee, Chippewa,
and Iroquois tribes from their armed pursuers.
>Ken covered three miles of forest within the first hour. Still caked with the drying muck
from the latrine pit, into which he had crawled through the hinged toilet seat to facilitate his
escape, he deftly slipped through the low-hanging branches and tangled undergrowth like a
rabbit at play. Only after covering one hour of ground did he stop to clean himself off and
consider his options.
>Ken did not have to think twice about descending into the slime of the latrine pit. At the
moment it had been the only tactic that would permit him to escape and get his information
back to their safehouse in Ohio. His training as a clandestine agent of the Matsutani ryu ninja
tradition had subjected him to far more serious offenses to his sensitivities than latrine pits,
anyway. With the proper mental perspective, a ninja can develop the power to live untouched
and undefiled while submerged in the middle of emotional dung holes as well.
>
>Still clutching the Gerber knife he had taken from his captor's boot, having purposely left
behind the Ingram with its useless bullets, Odate slipped sideways into a leafy cluster of
young oaks for concealment. Out of sight, the young ninja agent lowered himself into the half
kneeling, half crouching fudoza posture that would permit him to fly up and into action in a
split second if necessary.
>He reached around to the small of his back with the commando dagger and made a shallow
cut on the black leather surface of his belt. He then pulled the belt through its loops to remove
it, and used the knife to cut through the outer surface of the leather. Into the narrow slit, Odate
pushed the blade of the knife, creating a horizontal protective carrying sheath between the
outer layer and inner liner. He then took off his gray shirt and trousers and ground the fabric
into the blackness of the soil under the red leaves of the oaks. The Matsutani agent replaced
the camouflaged clothes and belt, tied the laces of his shoes in double knots to prevent their
unraveling, and moved silently into the forest once again.
>Checking his bearings by basing his angle toward the midmorning sun, Ken set out at a brisk
but untaxing pace. He used a level crouching posture-somewhere between a run and a walklifting and extending his legs with the muscles that made up the upper surface of his thighs.
He steadied his breathing into the full circular pattern of rhythmical inhalation and exhalation
without any pause between the two cycles. As he moved through the woods, the agent
mentally projected an energy and awareness probe ahead of himself, so that by the time he
reached a position that would have been blocked by a tree, his body was already aligned to
brush past without being hindered in the slightest.

>Kenichi Odate had been trained in the ways of Japans ninja phantom warriors since the age
of seven. Yohei Odate, the man who had married Ken's widowed mother in her twenty-eighth
year, had become his adopted father and his trainer in the esoteric art of ninjutsu, Japans
legendary warrior science that had been perfected by generations of families who had dwelled
in the countercultural twilight just outside the feudal Japanese legal and social structure.
>Yohei Odate had left the region of Iga along with the rest of the Matsutani ryu ninja clan
during the postwar rebuilding era of the late 1940s. The family's hesitancy to throw their
energy, loyalty, and sons behind the war effort of imperial Dai Nippon had brought them
under the pressure of scrutiny by the imperial kempeitai secret police in the 1940s. It was
during that period that the shrewd Takezo Matsutani, then in his 60s, had engineered the
disappearance of Iga's Matsutani ryu ninjutsu tradition. At best a nostalgic rumor carried in
the hearts and minds of the old people of the region, the tales alleging to the Matsutani's
having long ago been involved with Iga's ancient ninja tradition were easy to bury once and
for all.
>The family had reemerged in Kyushu's Kumamoto, far from the primary bastions of postwar
foreign occupation in Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukuoka. During General MacArthur's land
reclamation project, under which the major landholders of Japan were forced to split up and
sell off their huge domains, it was easy for Takezo Matsutani and his son Keikichi to
implement a web of false identities and rental buy-back schemes to acquire the land and
buildings they needed for operation in their new home territory.
>From Takezo, control of the family's growing fortune and redefined influence in the world
community was handed down to Keikichi Matsutani. Keikichi in turn willed the position of
head of the Matsutani family to his eldest son Hitoshi. Hitoshi, in his mid60s, had followed
tradition by passing on the legacy to his son Hideo.
>In the 1950s and 1960s, the underground role of families like the Odates and Kitagawas
within the Matsutani interests had dwindled in importance through lack of need. Complete
and total peace, enforced on a worldwide level, seemed to indicate that the Matsutani family's
days of struggling for survival had been well served. The family was on its way to taking an
honorable position in the postsamurai society of the newly resurrected international Japan.
>Largely due to the personal interest of Keikichi Matsutani and his son Hitoshi, however, a
trained and active force of clandestine agents was maintained and financed between the
entries in the corporate accounting ledgers. Matsutani Shoji Ltd. had acquired the controlling
interest in an obscure and undeveloped electronic security company called Eigo Keibi. The
sleepy little firm had been transformed by Hitoshi Matsutani into what the world of the 1980s
referred to as the cutting edge of state-of-the-art technology in electronic security systems.
Nationally based subsidiaries in countries around the world bought their technology directly
from the Matsutani's parent Eigo Keibi, thereby providing the Matsutani agents, under the
direction of Teruo Ozawa, with access to highlevel government and business offices across
the globe.
>Appropriate candidates for the demanding positions of ninja agents in the Matsutani family's
special Field Project Operations group were recruited from descendants of the past
generations' family agents. The overall reference code used to refer to the Matsutani
intelligence network was Takanometai, or the "Eye of the Hawk" group. Clandestinely
existing within this organization that was itself highly concealed, were the Matsutani active
agents, ready to move in where conventional intelligence-gathering tactics were no longer
effective. Charmingly code-named Musasabishu, the "flying squirrel" unit, the Matsutani
special projects action group was made up of men and women based in stations in major cities
around the world. Locating the agents in their respective spheres of influence had been an
effortless procedure during the globe shrinking days of the 1950s and 1960s. Intermarriage
with locals in foreign countries, as well as with citizens originally of Japanese descent, had

created an efficient network of intelligence-gathering agents for the Matsutani family

interests.
>With the intensifying of the alarming trend toward international terrorism in the 1970s and
1980s, the Matsutani family had hesitantly reinaugurated the long-dormant Hisatsutai, the
"force that never fails, even if killing is required." So confidential in nature that it was not
even known to the majority of top security cleared members of the secret Takanometai
intelligence network of which it was a part, the Hisatsutai squad had been employed fewer
than ten times in the postwar era.
>As had once been true for past generations of the Matsutani family, and had once again
become a cold reality in the modern age, there simply were times when the law meant so well
that it got in the way of justice. In such heart-chilling times, when the international courts and
peacekeeping forces found themselves impotently facing the defiance of a hysterical and
brutal enemy's affront to a civilized world, it was comforting to have an anonymous and
deadly "force that never fails" ready and willing to fly anywhere in the world and take heads
on a moment's notice.
>
>Ken looked up at the large flock of black starlings winging their way westward toward him.
The noisy creatures had ceased their grating cries as a group, which had caught the attention of the Hisatstitai agent. As the curious ninja looked upward through the treetops high above,
he saw the entire flock lift and bank south to alter their flight path by ninety degrees. Within
seconds the birds had vanished. Ken stopped and looked back over his shoulder. Though he
could neither hear nor see anything unusual, his trained senses told him that something very
intimidating was heading his way.
>
>Yohel Odate had willingly accepted the boy his new bride had brought along from the island
with her. Rather than resent the fact that little Kenichi had been fathered by the tall, enigmatic,
darkhaired Scotsman who had come to Kuro on business for the British government and then
vanished somewhere north of Honshu in Russian-claimed waters, Yohei was excited by the
prospect of bringing up a member of the first "transnational" generation in the new age of the
Matsutani extended family structure. The boy would embody the best physical advantages of
both worlds, Yohei used to boast quietly to his cohorts after a few too many flagons of warm
sake. The boy was a perfect mix of the proven methods of the East and the unlimited potential
of the West.
>The young Kenichi Suzuki, renamed Odate, was subtly primed under careful observation for
his potential career as the eighteenth generation of Odate shadow warriors to serve the
Matsutani ryu. The young man took to training well, partly out of admiration for the
commanding Yohei Odate and partly out of sheer animal affinity for the extremely physical
lifestyle. By the time his adopted son had entered his early teen years, Yohei was convinced
that Kenichi Odate was born to be a warrior.
>Test after test, first physical, then mental, and then emotional, had followed Ken Odate's
progress through the comprehensive training regimen established by his stepfather. Skills of
shinobi iri (silent invisible movement), taijutsu (unarmed combat), specialties of koppojutsu
(bone breaking) and koshijutsu (muscle and organ destruction), tantojutsu (blade fighting),
and hojutsu (firearms work) had taken him to the second of the four capability classifications.
When it had become clear to all the instructors at the regional training camps that Kenichi's
combat skills indicated he was without a doubt a candidate for the extremely rare third-level
classification, the eighteen-year-old agent-in-training had become the personal student of Toru
Kitagawa, instructor-in-chief for the Matsutani ni . nj. utsu ryu. That reassignment had also
brought with it the surety of grooming for a position with the elite Hisatsutai, about which the
young ninja knew absolutely nothing.

>
>Ken stood motionless next to a massive silver-barked beech and pierced the surroundings
with all his senses. He became aware of a faint humming, a thumping vibration, actually
feeling it with his body more than hearing it. Noiselessly, he moved to the top of a rise in the
woods ahead of him, from which he could quickly disappear in any direction should he spot
someone approaching.
>The rhythmical whup whup whup of the vibration continued to increase in intensity as the
seconds flew by. It was definitely a sound now, one that prickled in familiarity and suddenly
burst from the subconscious of the crouching Matsutani agent. He knew what it was now.
They had sent a helicopter out after him to try to pick up his escape route.
>As the craft drew nearer, Ken became aware of an additional sound that accompanied the
drumming of the jet-assisted rotor. Though still too distant to be made out clearly, a voice
could be detected shouting out commands of some sort over a bullhorn. Commands from an
airborne observer meant there were sure to be ground personnel to whom the directions were
being given. Ken pulled back beneath the cover of a cluster of huge beech trees, the lighttoned bark of which matched the coloring of his clothes.
>The helicopter exhaust became a deafening roar. Ken flattened out against the trunk of the
largest beech as the pale orange leaves overhead began to thrash and fly in the fierce
downdraft.
>The broad pale gray underbelly of a Bell 212 loomed into sight above him. Like the massive
scaled stomach of some cave-dwelling dragon taken to the air, the floor pan of the helicopter
rocked lazily from side to side as it slowly passed overhead in a deliberate forward
progression.
>The voice over the downward-pointing speakers gradually became more distinct as Ken's
ears adjusted to tuning out the steady thunder of the engine. Without leaving the protection of
his position, he strained to hear the commands. The helicopter was moving on by him, so that
meant in all likelihood that he had not been spotted, but he wanted to pick up whatever
information he could about people on the ground.
>The mechanically enhanced voice blared out the same message over and over again. "This is
a call in. Repeat, a call in. Code is resolute. Repeat, code is resolute."
>Shocked, Ken knew that there were no ground pursuers. Code resolute was an emergency
order recognizable by only seven people in the entire world and could only have come from
one man. Teruo Ozawa, wherever he was, had sent that helicopter out to bring him back as
quickly as possible.
>Ken followed the helicopter at a run. The field training exercise had been called off as of that
very moment.
>
>Chapter 6
>THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF China Air Force Mi-8 HIP Salon lowered its flight path and
leveled out in a holding position. From a distance, the squat five-bladed helicopter hanging
over the landing strip resembled a massive dragonfly hovering above some giant lily pad.
>Inside the craft, the sole passenger casually looked to the side through the rectangular
window port and out over the protruding wheelcover pod. Below him waited the greasy
landing strip that had welcomed him so many times on the first leg of so many other similar
journeys. Once again, the assassin Il Nam Kwon was being sent out into the world to take
lives in his duty of promoting the greater welfare of the State.
>He was low enough to the ground to see the brilliant crimson flags with their five gold stars
slapping in the brisk autumn wind of Anshan. Figures bundled in bulky olive-green uniforms
with red collar tabs scurried about the helipad below like ants, moving wheeled carts and fuel
canisters about, waving landing beacons, and unfurling banners, all in the distracting joy of

total dedication to the work of the State. They were indeed just like ants, observed the
contemplative assassin in the Mi-8, ever industrious until their final day, never having even
the slightest idea of the grander scheme that took shape about them as a result of their
unquestioning labor. But then, he mused, we all have our roles to carry out.
>At the edge of the concrete apron stood a group of five motionless figures who very much
did understand the greater significance of the plans they instigated and the actions they took.
Two of the figures wore the familiar olive-green, and the other three were clad in the drab
mismatched tones of grays, browns, and dark blues typical of common workers from the
southeastern European Communist bloc countries. Those particular men were, however, by no
means common workers.
>Kwon the assassin stretched in his seat in preparation for standing, and tried to remember the
exact number of times he had been sent out of North Korea through the Shenyang Military
Region on missions of State urgency. No distinct number materialized in his mind. He
supposed there were too many to be remembered.
>What really occupied his thoughts was the spy who had eluded him in Seoul. He had
followed the intruder to where he was picked up by a white Toyota hatchback. Tailing the man
had been more difficult than he had expected it would be. The intruder had studied the Jaejun
routine well, and knew that the security shift change would provide cover for his escape. He
had walked out of the fenced compound dressed in casual civilian clothes just like the others.
It was only the subtle effect of a few guards who unthinkingly gave the intruder a second
glance that had tipped Kwon off as to who did not belong there. The rest of the guards simply
assumed that the stranger was a new man on a post unrelated to theirs, and had paid no notice
at all.
>
> Kwon had turned in the number and regional code of the spy's license plate after following
his vehicle all the way through Seoul. The mysterious white Toyota had fled down TaepyongNo Street and gone right onto Jong-No. Kwon had tailed the car at a distance and watched it
pull into a high-walled motor pool compound in a seedy warehouse district. Kwon had
quickly parked outside and moved on foot to where he could see into the courtyard. There was
the abandoned Toyota in the parking lot of the Samung Plastics Company. There was no one
in sight.
>His moles in the South Korean CIA had gotten back to him with three dead ends. They had
found no such license plate listing in any of the government vehicle registration computer
banks. The number and regional code were totally fictitious. Even more irksome was the fact
that the serial number he had copied from the Toyota's dashboard was also a dead end. That
number had not appeared in any of the manufacturer's sales or service records, either in Korea
or in Japan. The number did, however, match that of a falsely registered vehicle in use by
local North Korean intelligence agents in the Seoul vicinity. Samung Plastics, they also
informed him, was a presently defunct and deserted safehouse once used to assist one of their
own North Korean snipers during the engineering of an assassination attempt on the nowdeceased President Chung Hee Park. The anonymous underground North Korean contingent
had expressed their gratitude to Kwon, however, for his work in locating the white Toyota that
had been stolen from one of their agents the day before.
>Kwon the assassin had not been pleased.
>
> Il Nam Kwon had been nine years old at the time he was rescued by the paramilitary
workers of the Red Youth Guard. In the cold blackness of a moonless winter night on the
outskirts of seaside Hungnam, the boy and his five-year-old sister had become separated from
their parents and three other siblings. Terrified, hungry, and tired, the two children had at last

come out of hiding in the dawn hours and allowed themselves to be found by one of the
roving street patrols in the wharf district.
>Before his rescue, life had grown exceedingly difficult and confining under the Communist
domination in the north following the close of the Second World War. Each day that passed
made it even more painfully clear to his father, Hamliung dry goods merchant Hu Rak Kwon,
that bold action as quickly as possible was the only hope of his five children growing up as
free people. He had watched his father and grandfather endure the frustration and humiliation
of the spirit-crushing Imperial Japanese colonization, and he vowed that his sons and
daughters would be the first generation of his family to live as independent Korean citizens.
>The secret agreement forged at the Yalta Conference of 1945 had ended any hopes of Hu
Rak Kwon's offspring enjoying life in a democratic Korean republic.
>In behavior typically exasperating to the moral nations of the world, Soviet Russia had
waited a mere eight days prior to the Japanese surrender before declaring war on the staggered
Asian power. Although the American and British Commonwealth nations had expended all the
energy and funds to bring Japanese military imperialism to its inevitable end, the Russians
appeared legitimized in their due claims as one of the fellow victor nations. Soviet interests
would have to be included in the reconstruction of the world at peace.
>Expressly as a means of facilitating the disarming of the defunct Japanese war machine, the
Yalta agreement provided that the Korean nation was to be divided "temporarily" at the 38th
parallel, with the Russian Soviets supervising reconstruction in the northern sector and the
Americans in the southern. Hu Rak Kwon's shops and warehouses lay far to the north, well
within the control of the new Soviet provisional military government.
>The moderately wealthy Hamhung merchant had arranged at great cost his family's midnight
escape from the oppressive communist North Korean sector in December of 1948. The true
story was never to be known in full by any of the unwilling and unfortunate participants, but it
was to be assumed that not enough of the right people had been supplied with enough of the
proper payoffs. A heart-rending snag just at the point of southbound castoff from a darkened
pier had gotten Hu Rak Kwon, his wife, and three of his children arrested, beaten mercilessly
with short truncheons, and dragged off to labor camp imprisonment by the North Korean
coastal police. Il Nam Kwon and the sister he had never seen again after that night had
escaped in the scuffle, but were nonetheless cut off forever from the family that had nurtured
them both from infancy.
>
>Clearance to land in the Peoples Republic of China was authorized at last and the hovering
Mi-8 HIP carrying the solitary North Korean agent dropped the remaining distance to the
surface of the waiting pad. The huge rotor fans were still moving as the five figures crouched
and then moved quickly to the side door, anxious to get on with the project at hand.
>The square door opened with a rumbling thunk and a squeal, and Kwon moved down the
narrow folding steps to be greeted by the private reception party. The huge North Korean
wore a gray wool western-style blazer over a dark blue sweater that stretched across the vast
expanse of his chest. Black trousers, rumpled and mud-flecked from his trip over the Korean
border and into China, extended down to his rubber-soled black canvas shoes.
>The green-uniformed Huang Fei, officer of the Peoples Liberation Army, stepped forward
ahead of the other four to welcome the arrival of the special agent who had agreed to work
with their unusual unit. Though official ranks and uniform insignia had been abolished from
the armed forces of the communist Peoples Republic of China in June of 1965, there were
subtle indications of an individual soldier's position in the supposedly unacknowledged
hierarchy. Huang Fei wore the four-pocketed uniform of an officer, while enlisted personnel
wore d two-pocketed version. Huang's official title was Army Commander, the eleventh place
from the top in a list of twenty-four ranks ranging from Vice Chairman of the Military

Commission down to Officer Trainee. A better indication of Huang's political clout was the
fact that he was able to arrange passage to Anshan above North Korea all the way from the
lower southwestern borders of the Sinkiang Military Region at his own convenience.
>Though Kwon was actually quite proficient in the Mandarin dialect that the Chinese military
officer used-having been exposed to Chinese, English, and Russian languages as a part of his
overall training for his eventual international specialty-he used an unintelligible grunt as his
greeting in return. In prior projects with Huang Fei, Kwon had created the impression that he
could not speak much of the officer's language. That illusion had proved handy on several
occasions in which the Korean was able to pick up information that was not at all intended for
his ears. He thought it in his best interests to maintain the charade a little longer.
>Kwon was next introduced to the second Chinese officer, Lin Fuzhi, an apparently trusted
confidant who had flown in from the mountains of the Ladakh range in the Himalayas with
Huang Fei. Perhaps due to Huang's perception that Kwon spoke little Chinese, no explanation
was offered as to the second officer's significance in the plot they were engineering.
>Kwon affected a slow smile while turning toward the Albanian and the two Bulgarians who
stood to the side of the Peoples Liberation Army officers. Kwon's eyes almost disappeared in
the folds of his wide face as the ends of his mouth curled upward in an ironically simple
smile. He raised his beefy calloused right hand into a palm forward salute and moved it
slightly to the side from the elbow. The Europeans grinned back in return at their old familiar
cohort.
>Karushilev and Orosov, the Bulgarian hitmen, had worked three wet jobs with II Nam Kwon
in the past six years. The Bulgarians were dependable, cold when they needed to be, and
inventive when the situation demanded it. The gaunt hollow-cheeked Zhelyo Karushilev was
a specialist with electronic surveillance and detonation equipment. His handiwork had
resulted in the ripping concussive explosion that had destroyed the deposed Greek royal
family's private yacht, along with several of the family's older and more prestigious members.
The moon-faced Sergei Orosov was an expert marksman with the 7.62mm Dragunov SVD
long-range sniper's rifle, and had played the backup hit in an unsuccessful attempt to
assassinate the Pope in St. Peter's courtyard. Had it not been for the tiny screaming nun whose
intruding body had unknowingly blocked his sights, Orosov would be known today as the
man who had blown the Pope's head clean off his shoulders.
>The lean and wiry Cresc from Albania was as vicious as any man Kwon had ever had the
duty to kill or kill alongside of. Reportedly of Gypsy descent, the dark-skinned Albanian with
the haunted eyes had played key roles in twelve political and economic assassinations
throughout the world in the time that Kwon had known of him. Cresc's specialty was killing
enemies of the State by means of opening their throats with his folding hook knife. Absolutely
conscienceless, Cresc the Albanian had once quickly murdered and disemboweled a ninemonth-old baby right in front of its hysterical mother in order to show just how determined
his cell had been in their demands during an embassy siege.
>All six men piled into a dust-covered BJ-212 utility transport, with Kwon and the two
Chinese in the front seat and the Europeans in the back. Army heliport ground crews
scrambled out of the way as the canvas-topped jeep wheeled hard to the right and headed
toward the official reception and clearance quarters. Lin Fuzhi drove the crowded command
vehicle, while Huang Fei called out directions.
>Passports for the four who would be leaving the Chinese officers and proceeding to Hong
Kong were obtained from the documentation office. Kwon would travel as a South Korean,
while Karushilev, Orosov, and Cresc would pass as visa-bearing Austrians. The four assassins
would be flown south in a PRC Air Force Cookpot TU-124 and then taken over the border
into the New Territories north of Kowloon. From there they would be shuttled to Hong Kong
Island and the warehouse on Tang Lung Street that was their eventual destination.

>Kwon was already sure that there would be some sort of interference in either Hong Kong or
Delhi. That was fine; to be expected, really. He had his key,backup people with him now.
Others could be recruited quickly through the Party's connections in Hong Kong or India
when necessary. It was just a matter of time before he would get back the results of his
research and have a final answer as to who it was that posed the threat of exposing the plans
that Huang Fei had personally entrusted him to carry out. Whatever obstruction that
materialized would be easy enough to neutralize. Kwon would handle it personally and would
succeed in the end.
>He always had in the past.
>
>
>Chapter 7
>As was their usual morning custom, the maroonrobed disciples of the Gyelsop Rimpoche
had gathered in their mentor's hospital room for their daily lecture. Though the Rimpoche's
voice had rapidly grown thinner and weaker in the days since his Chicago sessions, the holy
man had insisted on continuing with his teaching work. The Tibetans had by now grown quite
used to the cloying atmosphere of physical death that hung heavily in the air of the room the
lama occupied in the Matsutani Cancer Research Clinic of the Kumamoto University Medical
School. Their spiritual master was indeed finally dying, after all the miles, after all the years,
after all the hopes and prayers.
>The title Rimpoche, carried by perhaps less than one thousand Tibetans, literally translated
as "precious one." The term "lama" was Mongolian in origin, and had come to mean guru, or
spiritual master. Though all Tibetan monks seemed to be referred to as lamas in the Western
world, only high lamas and tulkus who were recognized as predicted reincarnations of
Buddhist saints, were to be referred to by the title of Rimpoche.
>The birth of the body that was to be recognized as the twelfth incarnation of the original
Gyelsop Rimpoche had been predicted in a dream by the eleventh incarnation, two years
before he had died of heart failure. After the death of the holy one in the winter of 1924, the
search had begun for the reincarnated twelfth successor. By following the clues noted in his
prediction, the parties of scouting monks were eventually able to find several children that
could have fit the prophecy of rebirth.
>A three-year-old boy born to parents in the dust-blown Tibetan town of Shigatse had been
brought back to the Potala sacred fortress that loomed atop Lhasa's Red Hill. Along with
seven other children, the boy from Shigatse had been subjected to a battery of strict tests
designed to determine whether any of the young ones was indeed the reborn personage of the
Gyelsop Lama.
>The Shigatse child known as jigme had responded with alarming surety to a choice among
three offered mala prayer bead strings. By the murky wavering light of flames from nine gold
butter lamps, the little one had walked right past the most colorful of the three strands and had
grabbed up the humble and worn beaded string that had once belonged to the eleventh
incarnation. He had also recognized a set of his predecessor's tingsha hand cymbals, and had
crawled cheerfully into the lap of the Tsingpori "medicine mountain" physician who had
attended the death of the eleventh incarnation. Five and a half years after the death of the
Gyelsop Lama, the Gyelsop Lama had been rediscovered once again.
>Despite the crippling waves of pain that surged like bell peals from his rapidly deteriorating
digestive tract, the revered lama continued to teach. Today he spoke of ever returning to the
fundamentals of the Buddha's four noble truths. One moves toward enlightened consciousness
by first acknowledging those aspects of our humanness that stand in the way of its attainment.
>As taught by the awakened sage of the Shakya clan five hundred years before the birth of the
Western world's Christ, all of life can be seen as suffering. The roots of all suffering lie

embedded in the clinging to attachments. These attachments that cause the conscious
awareness of suffering can be overcome. One overcomes the delusions that cause the
suffering by following the disciplines that provide for an orderly and steady progression
toward the mastery of self that permits the breakthrough. These four truths formed the core of
the approach taken by the holy seekers of Tibet since the beginning of the eighth century.
>"Rimpoche," asked reporter Karen Burke, "all of life is suffering?" The Canadian writer
nestled a small cassette recorder in the green wool of her lap and held a pen to her note pad
for backup.
>
>TULKU 57
>
>
>"Yes, though the unenlightened eye is often deceived," replied the Tibetan holy man through
his interpreter Thangme.
>"Then what of fun, success, or even the simple beauty of a sunset? Where is the suffering
there?"
>"The suffering lies in the sure knowledge that any enjoyment must someday run out. For one
who has not yet mastered the transcendence from the world of illusion, there is sadness in the
beauty of the blossom because that person knows the blossom will not last. Even the youngest
creature will grow old, even the strongest will eventually wither,' the Gyelsop Rimpoche
lowered the flattened palm of his gesturing right hand onto his own chest, all will eventually
die. The more we cling desperately to demands for enjoyment, the harder will come our
eventual forced withdrawal from what we think that we are enjoying."
>Peter Rowe lifted his mechanical pencil for attention. "Then it is not the enjoyment itself that
is bad, but the attachment to the enjoyment."
>"It is not a matter of anything being bad, or good for that matter, but of letting go of such
needs for labeling and qualification. Trying to separate good from bad is yet another form of
this same concept that Shyakamuni the Buddha referred to as suffering."
>The Rimpoche shifted in his bed, as best he could under the circumstances, to better see the
writers who had remained at his side long after the majority of reporters had filed their stories
and left. The tubes and tape that ensnared the holy man's body made movement difficult. "By
our conventional labels, we always see good becoming bad, which in turn becomes good to
become bad again. How confusing it all is."
>Thangme spoke his teacher's Tibetan words in rapid English for the writers at the edge of the
hospital bed. "Take for instance the story of our expulsion from our age-old homeland in
Tibet. How hard life was on the Tibetan Plateau. With so little available in resources and
natural aids, a man surviving to the age of forty was considered to be an elder. Is that bad?
Because life was so transitory, so easily snuffed out, it was all the more important to come to
an early understanding of those 'beyond the physical' factors that could be seen to underlie the
five senses' messages as to what life is all about. Is that good? Bad?
>"Sometimes in the West, with everyone expecting to live on past seventy, it is possible for
people to feel that they have plenty of time. There is no urgency. Let us divert ourselves with
panic or pleasure today, they may feel, for there is always more time in the future for
cultivating personal peace and power. It is as though those persons believe they will live
forever, which, of course, they will not. Is that bad, though, really? Isn't it possible that
missing the lesson could be a form of valuable lesson in it self
>"The Chinese invaded our homeland with intentions of destroying everything about our
traditional culture and way of life. They ended up eradicating huge numbers of our people, as
well, in programs of mass murder. Is that bad? It would seem so, wouldn't it? But who has
vision vast enough to see all of the karmic cycles at one moment, to know all of the pieces of

the cosmic puzzle? Perhaps those murdered ones, including my very own sisters and father,
were instantly relieved of all karmic debt accumulated over many lives and eons. Then would
their murders be seen as good, as blessed acts of compassion from an all-knowing universe?
>"The Chinese forced us to choose between death in Tibet and life outside of our sacred
Forbidden Kingdom. We were forced to abandon priceless treasures of art, knowledge, and
spiritual power. Was that bad? Our holy godking the Dalai Lama went from his rightful
residence in the Potala palace to a refugee tenement in donated space held by India."
>For the sake of clarity in the minds of the North Americans in the room, Thangme the
interpreter used the Western title of Dalai Lama when speaking of the fourteenth Gyalpo
Rimpoche, as the exiled supreme ruler is known to Tibetans. The title Dalai Lama, meaning
"Broad Ocean" in Mongolian, had first been applied to the third Gelugpa abbot of the
Drepung monastery by the Altan Khan in 1578. The title had been used by outsiders to
describe all Tibetan supreme patriarchs since that time.
>"Was that forced exile bad? How could it be good?
>"We have to acknowledge, however, that now the holy Dharma teachings, as they were lived
by but a few in a mountain stronghold, are available to be shared by all. Our exposure to the
West has in turn made our own holy men less reliant on mere superstition, and has brought
about a broader and richer understanding of the spiritual truths that we have sheltered over the
ages. Then is not our exile good?"
>The lama relaxed into the sheet beneath him, obviously overtaxed by his dissertation. "Good,
bad, we will never have the answer as long as we struggle to come up with one firm and
unchanging viewpoint. That futile struggle violates the very process of the universe."
>Dr. Isao Murata interrupted the discourse when he entered the Rimpoche's sun-filled room.
"Good morning. I hope you had a good night?"
>The Tibetan holy man smiled mischievously and winked at the small collection of reporters.
"No, not good, but not bad either." The Western journalists laughed quietly in sympathy with
the humor of the man's play on the morning's lesson.
>Actually, the twelfth Gyelsop Lama had spent an agonizing stretch of hours the night before.
The radical treatments that he was receiving, in conjunction with the natural torment of the
disease itself, worked to increase the Tibetan's intense discomfort. Swallowing had become an
effort, breathing was work, and digestion of food was now out of the question. Tubes carried
needed nutrients into the body of the monk, and tubes drained away the ever-increasing
wastes.
>A ' team of white-clad Japanese medical attendants swarmed into the room behind Dr.
Murata and gathered around the bed of the lama. "I am sorry, but we will have to ask you to
excuse his holiness," offered Koichi Araki. Men and women of the clinic staff bustled about in
chores of rigging up suspended bottles, cranking up bed side-rails, and unlocking the traveling
wheels as the monks and writers filed out of the door in reluctant procession.
>From his reclining position in the wheeled hospital bed, the twelfth Gyelsop Lama asked to
spend a moment with Thangme the interpreter before being taken off to his therapy session.
The man had so insisted that Dr. Murata felt he could hardly refuse him. The medical
personnel moved from the room along with the retreating monks, and Isao Murata pulled the
door behind him as he too left.
>"Dr. Murata, how much time do you really see him as having left?"
>"That is not something that is possible, or even wise, to speculate about, Mr. Rowe," the
chief of research replied in English as he walked down the hall with the sandy-haired
American. Peter Rowe was compiling a personal account of the lama's last days, partly out of
hopes for a substantial sale to a magazine willing to pay well, and partly out of his own desire
for personal growth. "We and the lama know that his case is terminal. The damage that the

disease has carried out already would prevent normal daily life. That much is beyond any
miracle. There is such a thing as irreparable damage, we must admit."
>"How has the traditional Tibetan religious community responded to the Rimpoche's
willingness to be treated in a Western institution?" The reporter then smiled in interruption of
his own question. "I guess that sounds funny, doesn't it, an American referring to a Japanese
cancer clinic as a 'Western' institution?"
>Isao Murata smiled. "No, that is fine. We are indeed very Western here, Mr. Rowe. I suppose
that is one of my contributions. Before this assignment, Dr. Araki and I spent several years as
cancer researchers at the Hipple Lab in Dayton, Ohio, in the United States."
>"Isn't there any resentment? They do have their own approach to medicine, quite radically
different from that of the Western world." Peter Rowe held up a book written in English by
Yeshe Donden, personal physician to the Dalai Lama.
>"These Tibetans seem to be a very adaptive group. They were the Forbidden Kingdom
before the Communist Chinese moved in and caused the leaders to flee. There was no input
from the outside world whatsoever. Now these Forbidden Kingdom people are moving freely
in open world society and that world society seems to be listening to their story."
>The Japanese cancer researcher stopped and turned to look at the American magazine writer.
"The lesson I have gotten from them is that they seem to see a oneness about all that is going
on. They do not appear to be at all concerned with East and West distinctions, with their way
and ours. It seems to be more a matter of what new insights they can get from us and add to
what they already know, as opposed to competing with or converting to other systems."
>The door at the end of the corridor behind them opened quietly. "Dozo, haitte," Thangme
called out in Japanese. It was now time for the others to enter.
>
>The doctor from the Kumamoto University Medical School joined his staff in preparation to
escort their charge down the gleaming corridor toward the elevator that would take them up to
the shielded therapy center at the west wing of the clinic. Several of the journalists left by the
front door, off for some lunch and some time to organize their material. The Tibetan monks
wordlessly began to form two rows of bowing figures, through which the lama would be
wheeled.
>Thangme, the wiry interpreter with the short-cropped, shaggy hair, clutched his robe to his
chest and flattened himself against the open door. He moved out into the corridor against the
flow of the white-suited clinic staff entering his spiritual mentor's room, and continued away
from the door. The monk carried a small, worn, gold-embroidered silk bag in his left hand,
and appeared to be deep in thought as he went his own way.
>
>The elongated black Mercedes Benz 500SEL sedan followed the towering stone-block wall
with the gray tile ridge line for its full extent all the way up the hill at the edge of Kumamoto's
exclusive Shinyashiki residential district. Behind the elevated barricade the lofty tops of a
stretch of spruce and cedars could just barely be seen, so tall was the wall and its cap. Three
snowy-white egrets in flight from the pond beyond the wall gracefully cleared the ray green
foliage of the ancient trees on lifted wings and banked westward into the last remnants of the
day's vanishing sunlight.
>At the corner, the chauffeured vehicle turned left and followed the traditional fortification
for another full minute before turning left through the broad entryway with its classical
Japanese roofed mon gate house and massive double doors.
>Osamu Noguchi, quite intimidating in his black uniform, knee-high boots, and wraparound
sunglasses, left the gate house and approached the slowing Mercedes. The estate entry guard
flexed his knees to crouch low enough to see inside the rear window of the sedan. The heavily

tinted window lowered electronically to permit Noguchi to ascertain that the passenger was
alone as he was expected to be.
>Noguchi bowed deeply and formally toward the occupant of the back seat of the bulletproof
and blast-resistant black sedan, and held the bow until the limousine had traveled on and out
of sight beyond a wooded bend in the driveway. The assistant sentry Seiichi Obata covered
the open gate with his attention while his superior devoted his attention to their employer and
the driver.
>The gravel drive emerged from the depths of the pine grove to cut through the open space of
a manicured lawn and circled in front of the reception veranda of the main house. Huge bushy
clumps of rhododendron bordered the drive all the way around to the broad wooden staircase
that led upward to the genkan entry vestibule.
>The house had been constructed at the end of World War II to resemble an expanded version
of the owner's original family residence in Iga. A broad, gray tiled roof sloped radically
upward to a ridgeline that ran the length of the house. A golden dolphin with an arched tail
curled up from each end of the towering roof peak. Eight massive cedar pillars, each a full
twelve feet in circumference, held up the tons of clay tile that made up the roof. The tiled
overhang extended out over the wooden floor of the roka veranda that encircled the lower
level of the house.
>Yoshimitsu Kimura pulled the Mercedes to a gentle stop in front of the huge weathered
horizontal timbers of the front entrance staircase. The long black vehicle, stretched an
additional forty-six inches beyond the normal length of its frame to create the limousine
configuration, covered the width of the ascending blocks leading up to the house. Before
opening the driver's door, Kimura visually scanned the lawn, the garden that swept out to the
side and rear of the house, and the structural angles of the shoji wall screens that ran along the
front of the building. Satisfied that all appeared normal, the driver then stepped out from
behind the wheel to open the rear door for his passenger.
>Kimura was rated at the second of four advanced levels of licensing in the Matsutani ryu
ninja combat method. Retired from active service as a Musasabishu agent, Yoshimitsu Kimura
had gone on to apply his skills in observation, intelligence gathering, and bare-fisted
koppojutsu in his new role as personal driver and bodyguard for the chairman of the board of
Matsutani Shoji Ltd.
>The gray-suited Kimura escorted Hitoshi Matsutani up the staircase to the entry wing of the
massive home. The maid Mitsuko waited as always at the entrance to the genkan. She wore a
subdued formal black kimono with a wide pale blue silk obi sash around her waist, and held
the chairman's leather house slippers cradled in her arms. Bowing deeply, the forty-year-old
maid welcomed Hitoshi Matsutani home at the end of his office day. He was, however, by no
means finished with his workday.
>Having exchanged his shoes for the slippers offered by Mitsuko, Hitoshi shuffled noiselessly
down the polished wooden floor of the corridor leading to his living quarters. He carried with
him five scenario proposals that had been sealed in brown envelopes and presented by
Ozawa's staff just before he departed the office. Hitoshi would read over the proposed
solutions to their dilemma and then authorize a plan of action based on his own impressions
of all the possibilities, once he had the opportunity to relax and meditate on the situation.
There was one matter to be tended to before dealing with the scenario proposals, however,
and the Matsutani patriarch had his mind set on the preparations for the annual ritual he was
to perform that evening.
>Matsutani's wife, Rieko, appeared at the end of the corridor where the sliding wall panel
opened onto the private sitting parlor that was situated in front of their spacious sleeping
room. The slender Rieko Matsutani wore a floral-patterned kimono of orange and rust hues
accented by a wide moss green obi at her waist. The expansive rear wall of their apartment

had been left open to reveal the autumn garden behind her, and Rieko was the picture of grace
and refined Japanese elegance as she bowed to her husband at the threshold to the quarters
they had shared for over thirty years.
>Okaeri nasaimase, " she offered in welcome without looking up from her bow.
>After a leisurely forty-minute soak in the steaming waters that awaited him in the cedarwalled ofuro adjacent to his dressing room, Hitoshi joined his wife at their polished mahogany
dining table. He wore a medium-weight, dark blue kimono with a black sash tied at the back.
In the Japanese fashion, the table legs extended thirteen inches, and the diners sat on zabuton
cushions with their knees tucked under the overhanging edge of the horizontal wooden slab.
Rieko sat in the seiza posture with her heels beneath her seat. Hitoshi sat with his legs folded
in front of him.
>The couple shared a light meal of miso soup, broiled salmon, marinated spinach stalks with
sesame seeds, and the health promoting genmai rice that the Japanese were slowly beginning
to realize was much more nutritious than the more refined polished white hakumai. The
kitchen maid then served small plates of peeled and quartered mikan fruit along with two
narrow steaming cups of the delicate pale green ocha.
>After finishing the tea, Hitoshi wordlessly left the table to prepare himself for the hoyo ritual
that was his duty to perform in the tenth month of each year.
>The kimomo-clad Matsutani walked in solitary contemplation among the trunks of the
towering firs that lead to the walled meditation garden. His thoughts drifted from the current
major crisis that faced the Matsutani corporate empire and turned to the ever-unfolding
history of the Matsutani family. He looked out over the stark surroundings of an artificial sea
formed from raked white pea gravel. The surface of the dry sea was discreetly broken by five
miniature islands of jagged rock and shag moss. Hitoshi sat in the formal zazen position and
began the gradual clearing away process that would lead to the "stainless" state of
consciousness.
>As the senior male head of the Matsutani family, it was Hitoshi's obligation to fill the role of
spiritual figurehead in the ceremonial revering of the family's ancestors, as well as performing
the duties of moshu at the death of any family member. He had been trained in the spiritual
practices handed down through his family tradition, in addition to having received initiation in
the exoteric kengyo and esoteric mikkyo rituals of Hiei Mountain's Tendai sect.
>Hitoshi ducked slightly to enter the low opening of the weathered gray wood structure that
faced out over the tranquil sea of white gravel. The temple was small, intentionally stark in its
sparse fittings and thatched rice straw roof, and left open to the elements throughout all
seasons.
>On a raised platform in front of the wall before him sat a carved wooden likeness of the allilluminating Dainichi Nyorai, the personification of what the universe would be like if every
aspect had attained enlightenment. To the right of the central figure was a smaller likeness of
the wrathful Fudo Myoo, personification of that quality of the universal scheme of totality that
firmly, resolutely, takes all on to its inevitable outcome. To the left of the Dainichi figure in
the center was a carved image of the fierce and gracious Aizen Myoo, personification of the
quality of love transformed into the compelling power that takes others to the higher
realizations of enlightened consciousness.
>The wooden figures with their intent faces and gesturing arms were not considered as "gods"
in and of themselves, but rather as symbolic representations of certain qualities of existence
that were needed in the heart and mind of the supplicant. The petitioner did not necessarily
pray to the figures. He meditated on assuming the qualities represented by the figures.
>Hitoshi faced the three carved images 'in the kneeling seiza posture and reached out to light
nine candles and three long stalks of incense. To avoid fouling the offering with the baser
aspects of his physicalness, Matsutani gently, fanned the flame from the tips of the incense

sticks rather than blowing them out. He rapped the edge of a thick-walled brass-bowl gong
with a wooden striker and gently retreated to a subtle sanctuary behind his closed eyelids.
>He then allowed his awareness to merge with the fading reverberations of the gong and the
pungent scent of the incense smoke. He had taken his place in front of the honzon to lend the
power of his intentions to the grander unfolding of the universal scheme, and to seek the
intuitive guidance that is provided when the petitioner finds the key to perception through
shinshin shingan, or "the mind and eyes of the divine essence."
>The annual hoyo death anniversary observation rites were for Hitoshi's brother Kozo.
Though the series of rituals was normally considered as being completed after the twentythird year rites, he had continued his brother's observance for over forty years now.
>Keikichi Matsutani had produced three male offspring. Hitoshi, the elder heir to the title of
family head, had been followed by Kozo and then Satoshi. Born in the low-lying mountains of
Iga during the closing years of the Taisho Emperor's reign, Keikichi's sons had spent the
1920s and 1930s growing up in the wild and expansionist days that were Japan's full-speed
dive into the territorial race against the established imperialist nations of the world. The boys
would be the first truly international generation, vowed grandfather Takezo Matsutani as
family patriarch. Takezo's eldest son Keikichi was encouraged along with his brothers to
move his sons into the mainstream of international awareness that had flowered across the
Meiji Emperor's reign during the turn of the century.
>Capitalizing on the Matsutani family's semidormant network of agents, alliances, and friends
still in place throughout the island nation of the Rising Sun, Takezo and his son Keikichi
maneuvered the young men of their new generation into the best schools available in the
capitals of Japan, China, and the far-off continent of Europe. There, the young men from the
once-outcast Matsutani ninja family were able to transcend the disgrace forced upon their
ancestors by a society and history of a far different era. The boys met other heirs from the
wealthy trading families that had finally engineered the end to Japan's feudal shogunate
government in the 1860s. By establishing important contacts, studying the revolutionary new
outlooks on trade and international finance, and moving into an expanded global frame of
reference, the underground survival structures of the Matsutani family interests were at last
able to become like a well-entrenched root system for a towering oak, growing ever taller in
the radiant sunshine of Japanese economic prosperity.
>Clandestine intelligence-gathering skills that had permitted the Matsutanis to endure and
prosper in even the worst times of Japans past history were combined with the newly
developed strategies of aggressive marketing and distribution. The result was an international
web of partnerships, channels, and mutually beneficial relationships that radiated out from
south central Japan to reach around the globe. It had taken centuries, but at long last the
descendants of the deposed warrior Masakado Yokuoka of Matsutani district had taken their
family once again into its rightful place of honor in Japanese society.
>The military takeover of the young Showa Emperor's government in the late 1930s and the
subsequent war in the Pacific threatened to destroy all that had so recently come to bloom for
the Matsutani clan of Iga province, however. Along with the military direction of the
government had come the inevitable secret police forces and increased regulatory observation
of all citizen activities. New government policies concerning trade and the allotment of
resources had radically hampered the once-free market prosperity of post-feudal Japan. The
militarists who influenced the impressionable young Emperor had their own plans to instigate,
and one by one, the majority of the Matsutani family's international financial allies were
declared to be enemies of the Imperial family and the nation of Japan. Frustratingly
overshadowed by what seemed to be the intertia of his family's destiny, Takezo Matsutani
moved to take his clan into the protective obscurity of underground operation once again.

>The teenaged Kozo Matsutani had gone from summers of remote wilderness ninjutsu
training, as was expected of all Matsutani sons, to full-time enrollment as a student in Tokyo's
Chuo University in the autumn of 1939. While there, the impressionable young man had come
to realize the startling significance of how unique his family's background in the esoteric ninja
arts really was. Through the confusion produced by long nights of political debate among
classmates from all areas of Japan, Kozo had become embroiled in an internal dilemma as to
why his grandfather Takezo had forbidden the young men of his generation to offer their
arsenal of ninjutsu skills toward the creation of a successful outcome to the current struggle.
>The gap between the elder Takezo's pragmatic vision and the younger Kozo's idealistic
conscience widened even more greatly following America's 1941 declaration of war on the
Japanese empire. Kozo lived with a constant flame in his heart, knowing that to turn his back
on the nation's expanding destiny was to commit the ultimate treason. If Japan fell, he pleaded
urgently to what he thought were deaf ears, the family would be irreparably shattered along
with the empire.
>The family patriarch also found ' himself slipping deeper into a personal dilemma. How
could he explain his decision to his distraught grandson without compromising the delicacy of
all that he had invested to engineer? Takezo was the one with the intelligence contacts in the
Japanese military and throughout the world. Takezo was the one who had come to realize that
in order for the people of Japan to prosper once again, the nationalistic frenzy would have to
be derailed. Takezo was the one who had worked for decades to cultivate financial allies
throughout the world in order to bring together the highly secret and totally illegal
underground cartel, the members of which controlled huge territories of free trade in their
respective nations. How could Takezo inform young Kozo as to all the facts that the young
man could not be aware of, and at the same time avoid the danger of exposing and destroying
the budding operation that formed the key to the Matsutani's eventual prosperity? How could
Takezo tell Kozo that he was literally betting his family's life by investing all their resources
toward the hopes that the Japanese war machine would be defeated? How could he tell him
that Japan had to lose the war in order for them to prosper?
>In the end, Hitoshi was compelled to confront his younger brother and sternly deliver their
grandfather's order for Kozo to return to the family stronghold in Iga. In the end, Kozo had
stormed out of the little dormitory room in Tokyo, never to be heard from again.
>
>Chapter 8
>
> IL NAM KWON NIMBLY popped two pork dumplings into his mouth and then drained his
teacup of its smoky brown immediately flew back to the revolving contents. His chopsticks of
the table, where they latched onto a wooden platter at the center tender meat off the small
barbecued chicken foot. Kwon sucked the bones and then reached for the steamed vegetables.
>The North Korean and his European henchmen sat at the stained wooden table with three
Hong Kong Chinese. The seven of them ere the only lunch guests in the deserted House of
Eight Plums restaurant. The other customers had either been bought off or threatened off in
order to reserve the sunny little dim sum eatery for their exclusive use. Kwon really did not
care how the place had been emptied out. Lao the Chinese had handled that. What he really
cared about was the fact that his people were getting nowhere with the information search
regarding the identity of the night intruder he had observed at the Jaejun International
warehouse.
>Kwon seethed in repressed rage over the humiliating irony that had left him looking like a
total fool. That kind of thoroughness in tactics was hardly the trademark of the American CIA
or Korean Intelligence, and certainly was nothing within the capabilities of Indian

Intelligence. The Russian KGB could have no way of even suspecting the plot at this early
stage, and would have employed heavier-handed methods anyway.
>Who was left? Could it have been the Japanese industrialists who were being set up? That
was highly unlikely as well. How could they even suspect what was in store for their little
capitalistic exploitation venture? Besides, the Japanese had willingly provided his cause with
hundreds of millions of their yen in the past whenever one of their companies ended up the
hostage in a Peoples Liberation extortion action. They had so much money that it was simpler
for them to just buy off anyone who threatened their well oiled Japan Incorporated profit
machine. Resistance was not a tactic in the handbook of the postwar Japanese.
>The hulking Korean wordlessly lifted the empty teapot into the air and stared impatiently
across the deserted restaurant at the proprietor's wife. The tiny woman, a veritable portrait of
fear, leaped from the stool on which she had perched and flew into the kitchen.
>
> "Whoever it was will make another move sometime soon," reasoned Kwon. "They think
that we are still unaware of them, that we're still in the dark."
>
>The North Korean knew that he could take no chances at this point. He would grab anyone
remotely suspicious and personally beat or drug the information he needed out of them. His
nemesis had already demonstrated an annoying knack for unconventionally sly tricks. Kwon
assumed the stolen North Korean car and the parking lot escape were intended as some sort of
humor. There would be no second chance to laugh at Il Nam Kwon now.
>
>"We have the warehouse under close scrutiny at all times, just as you ordered," said Chang
Man Lao, Kwon's chief contact for local services in Hong Kong. "Do we do anything to
further disguise the shipment?"
>"We leave the crates as they are for now," replied Kwon slowly, sifting through several
possibilities in his mind as he went along, "and watch to see what their next move is. We do
have an advantage, since we know that they are on to at least some of the plan, though we do
not know how much, or even who 'they' are. They probably have no idea how much we know
about them."
>The proprietor burst from the kitchen with two fresh pots of tea and ran to the table to
personally pour a cup for Kwon and then Lao. Three of the owner's children, appearing to
range in age from seven through early teens, followed their father to the table with wheeled
carts full of steaming bamboo serving boxes loaded with more of the dim sum delicacies. The
children covered the table with generous portions of food and then backed away to wait at the
outer edges of the white-painted, wooden-walled room.
>Sergei Orosov reached for a pork ball with faltering chopsticks but accidentally ended up
with a boiled chicken foot instead. The Bulgarian nervously regarded the pale appendage and
then discreetly replaced it on its wicker server, hoping that Kwon would not see the action and
take offense.
>Munching on a spring roll, Kwon seemed to come up with an answer. "We leave the crates
just as they are, and give our little rats in the attic the impression that we have no idea that
they are on to us. We even appear to leave the site unguarded-or, better yet, poorly guarded so
that they do not begin to suspect a trap. And then we wait to see their next move and discover
who they really are."
>It would be of no concern if the intruder had been Korean. The crates were now long gone
from South Korean soil.
>The American CIA would not be that much of a problem, either. Since the 1970s, the pitiful
Americans had become gun-shy when it came to involvement in other nations' problems, even
when those problems threatened to move in right next door to them. The communist powers

had carte blanche to shoot down the Westerners' civilian aircraft, depose the Westerners' small
allies from elected office, even attempt murder of the Western world's religious leaders
without fear of any attempt at punishment or retribution. The CIA would at best brush the
crates off as not involving them.
>The Japanese and Indians also were no problem. Even if those nations had hired someone to
do the spying for them, it would be of no consequence. They had no way of physically
stopping the cylinders from arriving at the energy plant in the dark of night.
>It would be a major problem, however, if the Russians had uncovered the plan.
>Huang Fei had conceived the plan whereby an unwitting Japanese industrial giant would be
held accountable for a massive industrial pollution accident in the Ladakh range of the
northern Kashmir stretch of the Himalaya Mountains. The region just happened to be the
center of a three-way controversy, being legally claimed as territory by India, Pakistan, and
the Peoples Republic of China. The region also just happened to be within three hundred
miles of the unstable border edging Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.
> When the deadly phosgene gas was released to work its skin burning, lung-searing effects, it
would be reported in the international media that the Japanese corporation had been guilty of
deceiving the locals with their claims that the energy production facility could in no way
produce any sort of pollution danger. The local Indian government would claim to have been
betrayed and appear to be criminally foolish. They would be subjected immediately to
extreme pressure, if not an actual invasion itself, from the contesting Pakistani government. In
order to maintain civil stability, prevent wide-scale outbreaks of bloody guerrilla warfare, and
assume control to protect the endangered environment of the neighboring Peoples Republic of
China, Huang Fei would be compelled to move into the region with Peoples Liberation Army
forces from the lower Sinkiang Military Region.
>Huang would then appoint Lin Fuzhi to implement a provisional military government in
order to restore order and supervise the cleanup efforts. The contested region adjacent to their
Aksai Chin territory would suddenly once again belong under China's control, Huang Fei
would be regarded as a hero to be rewarded in the eyes of Beijing, and the Chinese would
have taken complete possession of the Japanese-Indian prototype energy generation system,
which was reportedly a completely safe and remarkably efficient facility. As an amusing byproduct, there would be entire villages of the nuisance Tibetan refugees wiped out overnight.
>A wood-splintering crash from the windows across the restaurant sent Kwon tumbling to the
floor. He executed two bounding sideways rolls and rose to a crouch, the silenced 9mm pistol
in his right hand leveled to cover any potential target that appeared. The Bulgarians were
moving away from the table in reaction, their eyes turning toward the windows. Cresc and the
Hong Kong Chinese remained seated, staring across the table at the source of the disruption.
>
>From beneath the tall stool that had toppled over and taken him with it, the restaurateur's
youngest son stared back at the deadly party that bore down on him. With eyes wide in terror
and mouth drawn back in a soundless cry, the young boy remained frozen in place and then
began to tremble. The boy's brother and sister stopped dead in midstoop over the fallen stool
that pinned their younger sibling to the floor and glanced sideward at the rising Kwon. The
children's mother and father looked on in horror.
>
>Standing tall once again, the assassin heaved a disgusted sigh and slid the Makarov back into
its soft chamois holster. Eyes still boring into the floored child, Kwon picked up his chair and
moved back to the table again. Quietly, like shadows moving across the bare wooden floor,
Orosov and Karushilev rejoined the others.
>The proprietor of the House of Eight Plums was now alternating between frantic bows of
humiliated apology to Kwon's party and furious slaps to the stubbled scalp of his youngest

child. The skinny chef would jerk up and down from the waist with hissing kowtows and then
spin on his feet, greasy white apron flapping about him, to batter the shrieking child on the
floor, only to suddenly turn back and bow over and over again in shame and fear.
>Kwon ran out of patience. With a single barked order in Korean, he ended the distracting
hysteria. Though the Chinese family did not, of course, understand the Korean language, the
message was picked up with no uncertainty. The proprietor kicked and elbowed all three
children out of the room and back into the kitchen. The three cowering youths made no
attempt whatsoever to resist their father's blows and curses as they all disappeared through the
swinging red door.
>That little episode was just one more example of why Kwon grew more and more weary of
leaving his personal enclave in North Korea. It amazed him that the chaotic capitalistic
societies of the world had not all totally crumbled yet. These people were pathetic. No
discipline, no uniformity of ideals, no common social goals, and no authorities to direct and
supervise the progress of the community through the curbing of petty personal greeds. These
factors were sure to be the downfall of the capitalists eventually.
>How fortunate Kwon had been as a child. Rescued by the State after being abandoned by
those in whom he had wrongly placed his trust, he had been guided to manhood and groomed
in preparation for a useful role as an agent of the forces of justice and equality among the
workers of the world.
>It had been easy to forget the small-hearted, greedy parents who had cared more for the bags
of gold they had levered away from their destitute countrymen than for the offspring they had
brought into the world. He had thought that he missed them at first, but had been reeducated
to see the folly of personal wants that went counter to the greater needs of the people. He had
learned to hate the memory of the parents who had discarded him. Il Nam Kwon had grown to
feel increasing indebtedness to the communist designers of North Korea's destiny. How
beautiful and systematic was the communal social ideal that had been nurtured and
strengthened by their country's leader, the great II Sung Kim. If Kwon had ever had a father, it
had been the spirit of 11 Sung Kim.
> Kwon had been personally selected for training in his eventual specialty after beating to
death a fellow fifteen-year-old comrade in the Red Youth Guard. The boy had been caught
sneaking into their community pantry to steal food by night. They knew that someone had
been pilfering, and lay in wait for him. The apprehended boy had resisted student arrest,
claiming that the food was to be taken to his infirm mother and father, who were, he claimed,
in fact a part of the greater body of people that they had pledged to serve.
>The young II Nam Kwon had been enraged by the boy's blatant self-righteousness, his
foolish maudlin doting on those wretched old ones who deceived the boy into feeling
responsible for their selfish comforts, and his effrontery at refusing to acknowledge his
obvious guilt. Kwon had crushed the bigger boy's larynx with four elbow slam strikes.
>
>The next week, after all the official reports had been submitted and processed, the Peoples
Liberation Army intelligence officer from the Pyongyang capital had come to Hungnam. The
cold-eyed military man had been sent specifically to accompany the young killer on a journey
to a new training assignment, one for which he seemed to have demonstrated considerable
aptitude.
>
>
>Chapter 9
>THE LATE MORNING SUN beamed down on the red cowled shoulders of the monk
known to the Japanese doctors and clinical staff as Thangme the interpreter. Autumn in

Kyushu was warm, and though one usually needed a jacket upon first setting out in the
morning, by lunchtime it was shirtsleeve weather.
>The sun-browned observer walked among the ornamental pines in a small garden to the side
of the clinic. A bronze plaque, greened With years of exposure to sun and rain, proclaimed the
knoll to be a memorial spot dedicated to the memory of Takezo Matsutani, husband of Kiku
Matsutani, for whom the cancer research clinic had been named. Thangme the monk
contemplated the Japanese letter characters on the stone and bronze tablet for several
moments and then turned to stroll the grounds.
>Lifting his maroon cloak higher on the shoulders of his sleeveless golden shirt vest so the
sunshine could warm his exposed arms, he turned and moved slowly through the twisted
forms of the pines. Each tree had received a protective wrapping of yellow rice straw matting,
which was tied to the shaped trunks with black twine. The angular stalks were supported by
bamboo trellis structures that supported the weight of the evergreens at strategic points along
the horizontally growing trunks. Mounds of thick moss hugged the roots of each of the pines,
and created the effect of miniature mountain landscapes when viewed from a slight distance.
>
>Thangme still clutched the gold silk bag that the Gyelsop Rimpoche had given him from his
hospital bed less than an hour ago. He was deep in contemplation over the contents of the
embroidered pouch when he was approached on the gravel path by the Tibetan monk Samten.
>The skeletal Samten stopped short of the interpreter and lowered his head, his tongue
between his teeth as a sign of respect for a superior. "Rimpoche, may I speak with you?"
>Thangme the interpreter was the public identity of the man who was known to the disciples
in the Tibetan entourage as the Khundor Tulku Rimpoche, eighth incarnation in his lineage,
and spiritual brother to the dying twelfth Gyelsop Rimpoche. Thangme had been the tulku's
mundane label, or worldly name, the name by which he had been known in Lhasa before he
had been recognized as the Khundor Tulku, the remarkable "lama who arrived late." In a most
unusual and dramatic twist of the ordinary, Thangme had been in his late twenties before
being discovered by those guardians whose task it was to find the eighth Khundor Lama.
>"Certainly," replied the Thangme and Khundor personality. His voice lifted slightly at the
end of his brief reply, urging the other disciple on by that subtle means.
>"His holiness the Gyelsop Rimpoche, his time has drawn near." The statement was really a
question begging for verification.
>Thangme the holy man simply raised his eyebrows in wordless reply.
>"There are arrangements that must be made, your holiness," encouraged Samten, hoping for
something more direct than a lifted eyebrow. "The rites should be performed by a high one;
there was even talk of the supreme Dalai himself attending to the proper funeral."
>The Khundor Tulku Rimpoche knew that attendance by the Dalai Lama was out of the
question. His holiness, the fourteenth incarnation of Chenrezig, exiled spiritual and political
ruler of Tibet, was to address another meeting of the United Nations special committee this
week. It would not be possible for the holy one to fly around the globe in time for a funeral,
not even for the funeral of the head of one of Tibet's five major Buddhist lineages. No,
something would have to be done quickly, and employing those closer at hand.
>"I have sent out some discreet communications, Samten, to Vancouver and San Francisco.
They have agreed to fly here immediately when the time comes." Thangme paused and looked
directly at the gaunt monk before him. "For political reasons of which I am sure you are
aware, it would not be appropriate for me to administer the rites. We have seen how very
interested the international press has been in this episode so far."
>Samten pressed the tips of his fingers together in front of his chest and nodded in agreement.
He knew that the Khundor Tulku was forced to conceal his true identity behind the mundane
persona of Thangme the interpreter. Had it not been for the charade, the Khundor Tulku

before him would certainly have been dead at the hands of vengeful Communist Chinese
assassins years ago.
>
>The man they knew as Thangme had arrived in the Tibetan capital city of Llasa in late 1948.
The dust-blown, half-frozen wanderer had entered the city from the wilderness in the
southeast, having recently left a group of nomads on the south shores of Lake Yamdrok.
Thangme had first joined the pilgrims that walked, staggered, and crawled the circular
procession course of the holy Lingkhor route around the city. Knowing no one in the capital,
Thangme had later drifted off with several other pilgrims from the outlying provinces when
they completed their prayer rounds. Together they set their sights on establishing a base camp
out of which they could move about the city.
>Thangme had eventually left the city center to take sanctuary with the monks of Drepung
monastery five miles outside of Lhasa. A bright-eyed man of few words, the hard-working
Thangme found a home in the stark surroundings of Tibet's largest monastic order.
>It was two years later, as a result of the first Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet, that the
monk Thangme came to the attention of General Kunsangtse, then Commander-in-Chief of
the Tibetan Army. The influential general, in turn, introduced Thangme to the man who would
later play a major role in his life, the twelfth incarnation of the Gyelsop Lama.
>It was late December of 1950, and the young Dalai Lama was making his clandestine escape
from Lhasa under pressure from the Chinese forces that had devastated the outclassed Tibetan
resistance along the northern frontier. The escape itself had been held in such strict secrecy
that even the senior officials who were to accompany the fifteen-year-old ruler to safety in the
south were not notified until the night before the two o'clock predawn departure.
>The retinue of the young holy man king stopped at the Norbulingka summer palace so that
the Dalai Lama could say his departing prayers at the shrine there. Thangme had just
happened to be at the summer palace that winter as a part of a work detail of monks who were
preparing the grounds, shrines, and apartments for the eventual annual spring move of the
Dalai Lama from the Potala to the Norbulingka. Another group of monks in the work duty just
happened to be from the Trashilhunpo, the monastic seat of the Panchen Lama, known to be a
puppet pawn of the Communist Chinese.
>The totally unprecedented arrival of the Dalai Lama in the middle of the night, in the middle
of winter, had aroused the suspicious attention of the Trashilhunpo monks. It had only taken a
few minutes for them to figure out what was happening. The four monks immediately realized
that they held in their hands the key to their own advancement in the monastic hierarchy if
they could only get word back to their superior in time for him to detain the fleeing abbot of
the Gelugpa sect. The Dalai Lama could then be turned over to the Chinese Peoples
Liberation Army for arrest, and their Panchen Lama would be placed in position on the throne
of Tibet.
> Thangme had overheard the conspiracy and physically intervened to prevent the plot from
unfolding. Breaking every dictate of proper protocol, the lone Thangme had burst in on the
Dalai Lama's solemn prayer ritual to deliver the four prisoners into the custody of General
Dzasa Kunsangtse. In order to maintain the tightest of security, the ruler's escape party was
then forced to carry along the potential saboteurs and their captor with them.
> While residing in the provisional exile capital established by the Dalai Lama in Indian
Sikkim's Chumbi Valley, Thangme made the acquaintance of his holiness the twelfth Gyelsop
Lama. The young Rimpoche was very close to Thangme in age, and the two found themselves
sharing many common aspirations for Tibet, despite the seeming gulf in their personal status.
During the months they spent in India, a special bond was forged. The Gyelsop Rimpoche had
become guru and guiding mentor for the wandering monk from the shores of Lake Yamdrok.

>The Dalai Lama and his exile party were eventually compelled to return to Lhasa in the
summer of 1951. The Chinese presence remained in the form of armored military vehicles
roaring back and forth through the streets of the capital of the Forbidden Kingdom, and wallsized portraits of Mao Tse Tung plastered across the staircases of the Potala. In order to
assuage any possible outcry from a United Nations that had turned a very deaf ear to the
plight of Tibet anyway, the Chinese cleverly agreed to allow the Dalai Lama to retain internal
and religious control of his country, while claiming for themselves the direction of diplomatic,
economic, and military functions.
>Once back in Lhasa, the Gyelsop Rimpoche used his considerable influence to gain for
Thangme a place in the high monastic order known as the Tsedrung. Headquartered in the east
wing of the holy Potala, the Tsedrung foundation provided all the personal attendants of the
Dalai Lama, and was known to wield more political power at times than the secular
government offices of the land. Instructed directly by high teachers from the Mondroling
monastery, Thangme studied Tibetan grammar and calligraphy, philosophy, metaphysics,
history, and sacred texts. As a member of the Tsedrung order, he was also initiated into the
extremely well guarded secrets of trulkor, the sacred warrior tradition of Tibet.
>Then, during the autumn of 1954, well established in his duties at the Tsedrung, Thangme
finally admitted to-his mentor the full story of his background and youth. The tale had robbed
the breath from the thirty-year-old Gyelsop Lama. Here, he knew, was the long-prophecized
Khundor Tulku, due for birth but never found those twenty odd years ago. Without explaining
to his charge exactly what he was doing, the Gyelsop Lama had the elder regent of his
tradition administer the tests for verification of rebirth. The unsuspecting Thangme had
provided proof after proof of the validity of the Gyelsop's suspicions.
>At long last the search had ended. The eighth Khundor Tulku Rimpoche, the foretold "lama
who arrived late," the embodiment of worldly power destined to appear at the very moment
when Tibet's holy destiny demanded his presence, had been found.
>
>The elite monastics of the Tsedrung assumed that Thangme now recognized as the Khundor
Tulku had demonstrated the prophecy of his auspicious timing by appearing in the
Norbulingka summer palace temple at just the right moment to divert the treasonous
Trashilhunpo monks. As it turned out, that performance was to be but a mere warm-up for
what was to follow in the history of the downfall of Tibet, sacred kingdom of Bod.
>In March of 1959, the Communist Chinese launched a full-scale military invasion of Tibet in
order to quell an uprising of protest over the inhuman conditions created and enforced by the
Chinese occupation. This time the Chinese Communists made no apologies. Emboldened by
the world's lack of response to their previous invasion of Tibet, and by the United Nations'
inability to stop the communization of half the Korean peninsula, China moved in with the
full intention of devastating the Tibetan plateau. Communist troops closed and destroyed
monasteries, burning along with them priceless works of Tibetan religious art as well as
irreplaceable ancient manuscripts. Monks were forced to return to secular life or were killed
outright. The wealthier Tibetan classes were stripped of possessions and status, or pressed into
slave labor. The economy, health of the people, and productivity of the land had already been
destroyed by the Chinese. Now the entire Tibetan culture was to be eradicated and replaced
with a carbon copy of the dismal Chinese Communist experience.
>This time, however, the Chinese knew that the fourteenth Dalai Lama would attempt to
make a break for exile, and so countermeasures were taken to prevent his flight.
>In the end, the twenty-four-year-old holy ruler of Tibet was smuggled out of Lhasa disguised
as a soldier in order to avoid arrest. The Lama's party also took with them as many of the
cultural artifacts from the Potala as they could carry, but were forced to abandon forever
countless significant works of art and knowledge. Also reluctantly left behind to the savage

attackers was the vast treasury of gold, silver, and jewels hidden away beneath the white-andmaroon-walled Potala that towered over the Lhasa Valley.
>Completely unknown to the Dalai Lama's entourage, Thangme the monk, now recognized as
the Khundor Tulku, had remained behind to distract and throw off those Chinese units
assigned to tracking down the Dalai Lama as he made his perilous escape through the frozen
upper reaches of the Himalayas. During the week and a half following the Dalai Lama's
escape, the Khundor Tulku had subsequently earned himself a reputation that would never be
forgotten by the Chinese officers and troops charged with the capture of Tibet's supreme ruler.
>The tulku surrendered to the necessity of breaking his vows of total reverence for life if he
were to accomplish his purpose of assisting the revered god king in his flight to freedom. It
was the observance of the holy men that all life was sacred and to be protected as well as
prolonged. A fly falling into a chalice of butter tea was considered an emergency requiring
immediate attention. A moth trapped in the folds of a prayer banner stopped all other action
until its rescue was facilitated. Though meat was eaten, no Buddhist in Tibet would do the
work of ending the life of an animal in order to provide food.
>
>Thangme set out alone, the Tibetan military forces having long ago been disbanded. By
means of carefully engineered rock slides and well-timed flash floods, night raids on
temporary encampments, and a chilling barrage of psychological warfare tactics gleaned from
the arcane teachings of Tibet's trulkor warrior tradition, the Khundor Tulku time and again
derailed the Chinese pursuit. The tulku broke his vows repeatedly by causing others to reach a
sudden end to their lives. The Chinese pursuers soon learned through their informers that they
were being thwarted by a lunatic monk who went by the name "Khundor Tulku Rimpoche."
The young Chinese lieutenant Huang Fei swore that someday he would exact his vengeance
from these people, and that wretched phantom monk in particular.
>Thangme accepted his karmic defilement with equanimity. One does what one must and
universal life moves on from second to second. With each exhalation of breath, a little more
of the attachment to the illusions of life can be released. In the endless cycle of lives that
appear on our planet and then vanish, who is to say what is ultimate good or ultimate evil?
Where do the effects of the natural elements cease to be seen as natural and begin to enter the
realm of moral classification? Is the wind that tumbles the old woman off the roof to her death
below an evil thing, or merely the physical hand of irrevocable fate? Is the annual spring
flooding that drowns the yak of the hapless herdsman truly demonic, or only the form of that
which was meant to be? Are the crafty protestations of a monk which killing troops choose to
confront really an act of irreverence for life or simply the universal scheme of totality playing
itself out?
>The tulku who moved like the wind and the floods and the flame and the earth continued to
dodge and harass his pursuers and later joined the camp of the Dalai Lama in an Indian exile
that was to go on for decades. His holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama, the incarnation of
Tibet's guardian deity Chenrezig, had reached physical safety and gained a vast new world in
which to offer the wisdom of his dharma teachings. The eighth incarnation of the Khundor
Tulku had on the other hand gained the status of being a hated and wanted criminal in the eyes
of the communist conquerors of the Tibetan kingdom.
>In the sun-warmed pine glen adjacent to the Matsutani Cancer Research Clinic, the Khundor
Tulku regarded the face of Samten the monk before him. "You have much to do now. As his
holiness's attendant, you know the steps."
>Samten stood there wordlessly regarding the tulku, squinting into the sun that radiated down
from behind the tulku's shoulder, coming to grips with the grim reality that he was about to
lose his spiritual master to death. "And you will not be returning with us?"

>"No. Not just yet. There is, you might say, some karma reversal that I must personally see
to."
>Samten understood fully, and nodded in acknowledgment.
>Thangme the interpreter, eighth incarnation of the Khundor Rimpoche, abruptly lifted the
golden satchel he still carried. "Here. You will need this." The tulku looked down and used
both hands to work the drawstrings open.
>From the silk bag, he pulled a worn string of prayer beads, the strand that had previously
belonged to the eleventh Gyelsop Rimpoche and that had been recognized by the twelfth as a
tiny child. He handed the beads to the thin monk standing before him. The tulku then reached
back in the bag and pulled out an envelope that bore the seal of the twelfth Gyelsop Lama. He
handed over the envelope, which contained the instructions for locating the future reborn
thirteenth Gyelsop Rimpoche.
> Thangme wrapped the loose golden silk fabric of the bag around a third item still in the
embroidered pouch and tucked it inside the sash around his waist. That was a personal gift
from the Gyelsop Lama, an important one that the tulku knew he would need very much at a
later time.
>
>Ken Odate relaxed his shoulders into the purple brocade fabric of the broad seat back and
allowed the inertia of the takeoff to close his eyes and press the breath from his lungs. The
Japan Air Lines 747 lifted and climbed above Chicago, bound for Seattle. Then it would be
onward to Tokyo, where the connection would be made for Hong Kong after a brief meeting
with Toru Kitagawa in the Narita airport lobby.
>That momentary rush of excitement was still there after all the years. To be flying off across
the globe once again was still invigorating, no matter how many times the Matsutani family's
Hisatsutai had shuttled Ken from country to country. The world had grown so much smaller
since those childhood days in his small village on Kuro Island.
>Eyes closed and ears covered with yellow sponge speakerphones that poured the synthesized
music of Kitaro into his conscious awareness, Ken dropped the palm of his right hand onto the
back of Barbara Nishimura's left hand. His fingers intertwined with hers and gave a friendly
squeeze.
>Barbara glanced to her left to see him smile, his eyelids lowered and head thrown back, chin
nodding to some beat that went unheard to her ears. He really was beautiful, she thought
nostalgically, contemplating the lean, well-muscled body in the seat beside her. He must have
gotten his European father's face shape, with that long, straight nose and deeply set eyes. His
hair and skin tone appeared to have come from his Japanese mother. A black shock of thick
hair parted down the middle and flared back over his temples set off the slightly olive cast to
his clean-shaven face. She had seen those pale, thin lips assume the guise of an engaging
boyish grin, as well as take the form of a cruel and determined straight line. Barbara smiled
privately to herself and squeezed Ken's hand in return.
>The attractive sansei third generation Japanese-American was six years Ken's senior.
Barbara had been the one to whom he had given up his virginity as a teenager. Actually, he
had given nothing. It was she who had taken. Barbara had claimed his innocence from him as
part of her official salaried duties as an agent of the Hisatsutai force. The alluring shimma
kunoichi was not only seductive, but deadly as well.
>It had occurred during a remote training exercise in Kagoshima. The young ninja had been
stretched out, soaking in the blue-tiled ofuro Japanese bath after a particularly taxing day of
taijutsu training. He had heard the glass-and-wood sliding door rattle open on its tracks and
then rattle closed, and had lazily looked up through the steam to see the naked form of
Barbara Nishimura padding silently toward the wide, round sunken tub. She was staring

straight into his eyes, her unsmiling lips parted to reveal the edges of her teeth. Ken had at
once felt threatened and alarmed.
>Barbara extended her left leg into the heat of the water and then stopped, her right thigh
angled up from her hip and her foot still on the ceramic edge of the tub wall. She had paused
there for a moment, the glistening black tuft of her pubic mound protruding directly in front of
Ken's ashen face. His heart had begun slamming inside his chest. Barbara had then wordlessly
lowered herself all the way into the bath, her body movement creating faint ripples in the
water that radiated out to break as tiny waves on the shore of Ken's body.
>The young agent-in-training was paralyzed for only a moment before the purpose of her visit
slowly dawned on him. He was immediately and urgently erect as the unspeaking beauty
moved into his arms and pressed the firmness of her breasts against the taut and trembling
muscles of his abdomen. Her lips lightly brushed his several times, and then he had caught her
face in his hands and crushed her mouth with his.
>He had mounted her and climaxed three times before he reluctantly agreed to allow her to
leave the steamy bath cubicle to return to her quarters that night.
>Barbara's nocturnal visits to Ken's bath and futon had gone on for the remaining five days of
the training camp, and had left him drained and distracted during the rigors of mock combat
during the day. The crafty Toru Kitagawa had taken advantage of the situation he had set up to
teach his young charge an important lesson.
>"Concentrate totally on what is at hand," his irascible mentor had roared over and over that
week. "These men are going to beat you unconscious if you don't use the full extension of
your leg to kick them into the ground. Forget about using the short leg tonight, until you have
perfected the use 'of the other two today."
> Ken and Barbara were good friends these days. He understood that she had just been doing
her job that first week. She was assisting his teacher in getting him over one more limitation
that could put him at a disadvantage in the future. They had shared beds occasionally on
assignments since then, but under the clearly stated acknowledgment that those casual trysts
were at best only fleeting shelter from the cold and lonely reality that was their shared
profession. A good snuggle in the sack is the friendliest thing you can do for someone, Ken
once proclaimed with mock solemnity, and Barbara had laughed and rolled away from him,
asking where on earth had he learned English like that.
> For the past three years, lack of opportunity due to constantly differing project assignments
had completely prevented them from being physically intimate with each other. It was not
something that either one missed that much particularly. But memories lingered.
> Ken stretched, took off his earphones, and leaned forward to look down the row of seats to
his right. Beyond Barbara was a line of four more seats grouped by twos, each purpleupholstered recliner holding an additional member of the Matsutani Shoji Hisatsutai force.
They were the only passengers in the forward portion of the first class section. Though their
jobs often involved a gamble, running that fine line along the edge of life's ultimate sacrifice,
they were at least treated generously and were rewarded handsomely by their employer.
> A kimonoed stewardess appeared and asked if anyone cared for anything to drink. Ken
requested a glass of tomato juice without ice. Barbara smiled and shook her head no.
> "So you were in Ohio?" Barbara asked, resuming an interrupted conversation.
> "Well, Indiana, actually. My target in the exercise was southwestern Ohio, but as I said,
things got called off before I had a chance to get there."
> The leased Bell 212 helicopter had wheeled around 180 degrees to return to the small
clearing where Ken had stood fanning the air and flashing a polished belt buckle into the sun.
A lift belt had been lowered to the waving figure below and he had been winced up into the
cabin to be whisked off to Greater Cincinnati International Airport.

>A freshly scrubbed Chuck McKee had been on board the helicopter, his hair still wet and
slicked back from the recent thorough shampooing. He had brought along a coded telex
portfolio that he had been instructed to hand over to Ken Odate personally. McKee
commented on his surprise at Ken's easy fluency in English, but neither one had needed to
mention the tactics Ken had employed to escape from the man who had been playing his
guard. Ken had definitely gotten the best of McKee, and the mercenary had obligingly died as
per the rules of the game he had been contracted to play. All in a day's work.
>Barbara laughed at Ken's tale, and laughed even harder when he pulled his hair to the side
and adjusted his face and body posture to recreate for her the nerd character identity he had
used to cause his captors gradually to drop their guard after only two days.
>The Japanese-American beauty leaned forward over the armrest that separated her seat from
Ken's. "They had me in Detroit. I had to take control of a radio station there, along with Seiji
and Karl. It was a challenge, I will say that." Barbara went on to relate to Ken the adventures
she had encountered during her proficiency rating exercise. The pressures endured in these
exercises were what kept the Matsutani "force that never failed" agents in top mental and
physical shape at all times, since their skills were rarely called for in the daily dealings of
their employer.
>All agents of the Matsutani ryu were expected to retain top form in the combat disciplines
that made up their art of ninjutsu. Taijutsu with its components of koppojutsu, koshijutsu and
jutaiho (supple body escapes and throws) formed the basis for all other training from wall
scaling to blade handling. Unlike the quick-response teams of the military forces representing
the various sovereign nations of the world, the Matsutani force was an arm of a private
enterprise, and therefore extremely limited in the tactics that it could employ in protecting its
principals. Massive doses of heavy firepower that could be flown in along with the
Americans' Delta Force or the British SAS were totally illegal and strictly out of the question
for the Matsutani ninja. Though on two occasions since the second world war, assault firearms
had been required by the Matsutani ryu ninja, blatant force was to be shunned if possible.
>Most jobs demanded the subtle anonymity afforded only by those means that can be made to
model common industrial mishaps, or at worst, unprofessional terrorist attempts. Therefore,
reliable firearms skills were matched by deadly silent effectiveness with the hanbo short cane,
tanto single-edged fighting knife, and kusarifundo short-weighted chain.
> Ken drained the last of the tomato juice from the long-stemmed crystal glass and pulled out
the file that Chuck had delivered to him. He had read over the sheets hastily on the flight from
Cincinnati to Chicago, where he had linked up with the other members of his team. Ken
wanted to reread the message for any details he might have missed during that first quick
read-through. The Matsutani agent used a pocket computer from his attach case to render the
digital code strings on the yellow sheets into phonetic Japanese katakana script that he could
read.
>According to the cryptic message, the six of them were being flown to Hong Kong to
intercept a "package intended for a foreign host." There was a possibility that they would skip
Hong Kong and proceed directly to Delhi, and a further possibility of being shuttled directly
to some location in the Himalaya Mountains. No wetwork was anticipated-they were not
expecting to have to kill anyone but the project was to be considered of high consequence.
Further instructions would be hand-delivered during the brief layover at Narita International.
>A "knowledgeable advisor" would already be in place awaiting their arrival in Hong Kong.
That meant that Emi Kitagawa was on this job, too. That was enough to tell Ken how
dangerously far his supervisor Teruo Ozawa was willing to let this go. Toru Kitagawa's
luscious niece was the one who handled setting up the procedures for an agent's clandestine
penetration of secured facilities through her ability to reprogram any electronic security
system incorporating Eigo Keibi technology. No one in the field knew exactly how she pulled

off that incredible little number, but it was known that her skills were considered as an
absolutely end-of-the-list last resort.
>Whatever the mystery awaiting them in Hong Kong, or India turned out to be, it was bound
to be something big. Ken Odate already knew that much.
>
>
>Chapter 10
>
>No, I don't think we can use that one either," stated Hitoshi Matsutani with finality. He lifted
the file folder containing scenario number six and placed it on top of the growing stack of
rejected plan options. The chairman of the board of directors of Matsutani Shoji Ltd. sat
behind the vast expanse of his working desk in his shirtsleeves. In what Toru Kitagawa
considered a most uncharacteristic manner, the elder Matsutani had taken off his dark blue
suit jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. Informality was one quality with which the
commanding family head was least likely to be associated in the minds of his subordinates.
>"If we simply wait to expose the true contents at the last moment, we run the risk of actually
losing the poison gas cylinders among the current store of legitimate acetylene tanks. There
would be no telling when or where one of the killer tanks might show up." Hitoshi spoke
without looking up at the five associates that encircled his desk. He was already scanning the
next set of notes before he had fully completed his last sentence.
>Sanae Mitamura said nothing to attempt to defend her rejected proposal. The scenarios were
their form of brainstorming and the purpose was to come up with as many possible plans and
potential outcomes as they could. No censoring whatsoever was to take place during the
scenario construction phase. All ideas, no matter how odd or unlikely they might be, were to
be offered as fuel for the thought process. Whatever came to mind was to be written down for
Hitoshi to consider later.
>Teruo Ozawa had finished reading the scenario proposal labeled fourteen, and silently
passed the folder to Sanae on his right. She, in turn, slid the folder beneath the stack she held
in her lap for scanning. The air was heavy with the focused concentration of six working
minds striving to reach the ultimate conclusion for plotting out the survival of their family.
>From his position next to his father, Hideo Matsutani lifted a scenario file with both hands.
"Perhaps there is a way to tip off some uninvolved regulatory body, say the World Health
Organization, as to what is being smuggled into India."
>Emi Kitagawa spoke up. "Well, there is an awkward problem if we attempt to notify any
international police authority as to the nature of the poison disguised as tanks of harmless gas.
We would eventually have to get around to explaining how we were able to find out about the
bogus tanks in the first place. That leaves us in the unacceptable position of tipping the world
off about our intelligence-gathering capabilities. We have no way of justifying how we knew
what we knew."
>"There is no inspection of the tanks as they move from one country to the next, no customs
examination?" asked the sunbronzed president of Matsutani Shoji.
>"Not with these papers," returned Ozawa. "The examination blocks and clearance signatures
have already been forged in their proper places." The intelligence head of Matsutani Shoji
paused to look across at the company president. "Looks like we are dealing with some very
determined professionals here."
>Hitoshi found his eyes distractedly wandering the length of his expansive office, as though
the answer to their dilemma were to be found somewhere on the walls or ceiling. His office
extended from the Western-style control center behind him, complete with computer keyboard
built right into the working surface of his desk, into the internationally appointed conference
pit that dominated the center of his office space. Beyond the conference center with its

colorful wall-sized Neiman oils depicting the brutal action of sumo wrestling rings and the
stylized grace of the kyudo zen archery yards, unfolded the expanse of the Japanese reception
parlor. At the far end of the room, the vase with its styled reeds and the kanji lettered scroll
that hung above it formed a natural termination of the chairman's quarters.
>Hitoshi turned his head in his hawklike, imperious manner to see that Toru Kitagawa, too,
was staring at the scroll at the end of the room. Kitagawa felt the chairman's gaze and turned
his eyes back to the group clustered about the paper-strewn desk.
>"The scroll. I was just looking at your brother Kozo's scroll. 'After the ten thousandth
triumph, yet a beginner.' It does seem that each time we go through one of these crises, all
previous experience pales into useless insignificance."
>If the father Hitoshi was the hawk, his son Hideo was the falcon. "If my late uncle's words
were true forty years ago, they seem even more applicable today. The forces that would drag
us down increase in strength, it seems, in direct proportion to our own development. Each
generation of Matsutani seems doomed to ever more grand adversaries."
>Emi Kitagawa interrupted, steering the conversation back to the grim reality at hand. "I
could develop some sort of radio transmission attachment for the crates, if locating the
cylinders in Ladakh is the only problem. I could scan the construction area with a receiver
once I got there."
>As though her own critic, the female electrical engineer quickly added her own rebuttal.
"Then again, we have no idea whether the shippers, whoever they are, plan to change the
crates themselves as part of their camouflage scheme, No, it will take more than tagging the
crates."
>Hitoshi spoke, his deep voice tumbling across the desktop like distant thunder rolling down
a valley. "Where do we stand at this point as to action already taken?"
>Ozawa, senior in rank to all but the two who bore the Matsutani name, was expected to
speak first. "Taichi Nakamura, our man in Seoul, is still scouting for more leads as to where
the canisters came from in the first place. If we knew that, it might give us a better idea of
whom we are up against."
>Thinking out loud, Hideo Matsutani interjected, "It is strange to imagine that these crates are
part of a Russian or Chinese scheme. The Russians have Afghanistan and the Chinese have
Tibet. Either government could have moved the gas directly to the Ladakh site from one of
their captive territories. Why would they risk open territory transportation?"
>"Exactly, exactly," continued Ozawa. "Without a more concrete identification of who is
behind this potential atrocity, formulating a plan is like groping for kaki fruit in a darkened
storage shed. Anyway, we have our moles in the Soviet military and Chinese border guard
looking for information. Our CIA people are also on top priority alert, just in case the
Americans come across something that they have failed to, or have chosen not to, send along
to Tokyo."
>The stocky Matsutani intelligence chief placed his pen on top of the legal pad on the desk in
front of him, as though to signal that he was finished. The group turned to Toru Kitagawa.
>"I have all Hisatsutai force members on first code alert. Three are on their way to Delhi, six
are on their way to Hong Kong, and the rest are preparing for a flight directly into Kashmir.
Of course, any of the nine en route at this moment can be redirected to more appropriate spots
when we learn more." Quite finished, the predictably blunt Kitagawa sat back in his chair.
>Mitamura leaned forward and picked up her pen. Though only thirty-eight, Ozawa's
computer-minded assistant seemed to display more than that number of years in her lined
eyes. "Our Musasabishu members in Kashmir are already scouting around for any unusual
talk of rumors. They haven't been given all the facts we have as of yet, just that we suspect
something potentially 'disruptive' at the site.

>"I had better mention that it will not be easy. None of our site people are Indian or Ladakhi,
they are all Japanese, and therefore treated with suspicion. Probing for information under
those difficult conditions could be a frustrating task. To add to the complexity, there are a lot
of Tibetan refugees living in the area. They left their country when the Communist Chinese
assumed full control in the late '50s, and are still working to get the Dalai Lama back on his
throne across the Himalayas. There are all kinds of tensions already brewing there, even
without our concerns."
>The perpetually effervescent Emi Kitagawa picked up the conversation for her turn. "Based
upon what was on the shipping manifest that we brought back with us from Nakamura's work,
the canisters are, or will be, stored in a Hong Kong warehouse that does not employ one of
our Eigo Keibi Relex security systems. I can't reprogram their system for a break-in. Our
agent there is scanning the building inspector's logs for Hong Kong Island and Kowloon,
though. We'll see if he can get me any good information on what kind of system they are
using. I may be able to get some schematics from our reference files, just in case our 'flying
squirrels' or," Emi hesitated slightly and looked across the desk at Hideo, "Hisatsutai agents
need to get in there."
>The two Matsutani executives sat silently considering the information they had been
examining for the past two hours. The truly effective executive, Hitoshi had always counseled
Hideo, always asked far more questions than his subordinates. Having no one but the
stockholders to impress, he should be an intelligence gatherer, picking up whatever data he
could with no mind toward convincing others of his capabilities. Allow others the room to
make all the statements, voice all the opinions, and offer all the suggestions based on their
direct exposure to what was happening in the field. That way, the middle-level staff felt the
satisfaction of knowing that they were regarded as important, and the clever executive had the
benefits of several heads' worth of thinking.
>Hitoshi cleared his throat and began to speak. "Here is our approach. Since the evidence
suggests that our adversaries do not realize we are onto their plans, we allow the shipment to
move through Hong Kong unhindered. We must obtain, however, exact descriptions of what
the canisters and crates look like while they are in Hong Kong." The elder Matsutani waved
his left hand in a heavy circular gesture. "Perhaps we have our agents pose as inspectors who
seem to be convinced easily that the crates contain harmless welding elements. We'll work
those details out later. We then move to have a dummy shipment made up, an exact copy of
what is being moved through Hong Kong, which we swap for the actual crates in Delhi. It is a
stall for time at best, but it may just give us enough time to find out more about who it is
behind the plot and what we can do to permanently derail the scheme against us."
>The chairman of the board was interrupted by a single soft chime indicating that he could
check with his receptionist, Noriko, if he felt it convenient at the moment. He had left specific
directions that he was not to be disturbed during the extent of the meeting. Only the slightest
annoyance manifested itself in the corners of the heavy eyelids, however, and then the senior
Matsutani continued his instructions.
>Hitoshi swiveled in his chair to look at Ozawa and Toru Kitagawa. "I do not foresee any
need for violent intervention at this point, at least not in Hong Kong. I do want the Hisatsutai
on moment-to-moment call just in case, however. Keep those agents in Hong Kong and be
sure that they are ready to back up any of our locals there if they need help. We are dealing
with dangerous people here, whoever they are."
>Ozawa and Kitagawa nodded in unison, agreeing completely with the board chairman's
decision.
>Hitoshi angled his molded plywood throne in the direction of Mitamura. "Get all you can on
this warehouse operation in Delhi. Who are they linked to? Do we have anything on them in
our data banks? We will need . . ."

>The chairman was cut off in mid-sentence by two chime tones indicating that Noriko was
about to enter the executive working office, unless she was informed that her presence would
be disrupting. Hitoshi looked up with barely concealed annoyance. "Nan da! What is this? I
told her no interruptions."
>Hideo quickly moved to his feet. "Please allow me, Kaicho." Unchecked by his father, he
moved across the office to the double panel entrance, where he met the gushingly apologetic
and obviously flustered Noriko half bowing, half stumbling in through the opening door.
There was a moment of mild confusion during which the younger Matsutani finally ended up
physically moving the tiny Noriko back out through the doorway. The latch snapped shut
firmly behind them and the office was quiet once again.
>The chairman continued on with his instructions as though he had never been interrupted.
"We will need to get all we can on their loading and storage bay personnel, procedures,
uniforms, work schedules loyalties. Ozawa-san will give you full support. Delhi is going to be
the tough part of this operation, and we will have to have things planned out meticulously.
One slip and this anonymous enemy will know that we are on to him."
>Sanae Mitamura agreed with a quick nod of a bow. "Hai, Kaicho. "
>"Kitagawa-san," Hitoshi wheeled to look across at Emi, "I think it appropriate for you to be
in Hong Kong this afternoon."
>"Hai!" She felt it unimportant and unnecessary to mention that flight arrangements for her
and her uncle Toru had been made hours ago, and that a company car was waiting to whisk
them off to Kumamoto International as soon as the conference was over. She did feel,
however, a cold chill pass through her heart, then fade.
>Matsutani spread his broad hands pa)m down on the desktop in front of him and cleared his
throat with a small growl. "I do not need to remind anyone in this room that we . . ."
>The double doors slowly swung open over the moss green carpet that bordered the tatami
mat section in front of the window looking out over the rooftop garden. This time there was
no double-chime warning. The five bodies around the desk in the far end of the expansive
office space turned wordlessly to view the distraction.
>Like a priest solemnly assuming his position at the head of a funeral procession, the
restrained form of Hideo Matsutani slowly moved into sight in the open doorway. His right
hand fluttered nervously at the end of his red silk necktie, while his left held tight to the edge
of the door. The face that had been burnished by the sun during recent mountain treks had
gone gray. Under darting eyes that reached out in terrified bewilderment, the moving lips
finally produced sound.
>"Father. It's ... it's your brother. Your brother Kozo. Alive! He is ... he says he has come back
because you need his help."
>
>PART 2
>Chapter 11
>
>In the autumn of 1942, Kozo Matsutani lied about his name and age and became a soldier in
the imperial army of Dai Nippon's Showa Emperor. His hair was shaved off and he was issued
a set of olive-green wool uniforms with brown leather belts and boots. Having left all ties
behind, he committed himself to his new role in life with total fervor.
>Kozo was first trained as an infantryman under the watchful eye of the fanatical drill
sergeant Gunji Sato. The physical curriculum was tough, although easily handled in light of
his lifetime of training as a Matsutani ryu ninja. Kozo's spring-steel body, not yet even fully
matured, responded well to the physical demands placed on him. He flew ahead of the other
youths in his training squadron and eventually graduated at the top of his class.

>Kozo did well from the psychological standpoint, also. Some of his fellow classmates had
come from soft and pampered lives as the sons of wealthy merchants, and others had come
from difficult days as the offspring of impoverished farming parents. Neither of these two
radically different groups were able to stand up well to the emotional torture dished out by
their sergeant. The rich boys hated him and the poor boys feared him, and both groups
wrestled with their discomfort in their own ways. Kozo, on the other hand, simply accepted
the lunatic actions and the political harangues on the part of Gunji Sato as tricks from a good
soldier's repertoire of intimidation tactics.
>
>From his experiences in his grandfather's school of ninjutsu (about which, of course, he
mentioned nothing), Kozo knew that Sato was no man to fear if handled with the proper
perspective. Yes, Sato was a combat proven killer, but he enjoyed killing, and that was a
weakness. He made too much noise and worked too hard at getting others to cower. Kozo
knew that he could take the man out, if it came to that, by simply allowing Sato to get his
emotions rolling. Dosha, "one who is like the wash and draw of the waves," his teachers
called men like Sato. The calm mind was the tool to cause the dosha's demise. For all his
bravado, Sato, like any other, would die weeping and wetting himself if given enough time to
contemplate life with the edge of a dirty blade held to his throat.
>Sato eventually realized that there was something odd about this recruit who had come to
them without family papers, and the tough drill instructor from Nigata poured on the abuse in
exploration. There was a cold unnerving solidness about the boy that was belied by his young
years. He whined along with the others, shivered in fear along with them, and took the blows,
but Sato knew that it was all an act. The young man who never received any mail was
untouched at the core of his essence. Sergeant Sato could tell that his trainee was a killer, and
he knew that being a killer meant absolutely nothing to the boy. That sort was the most
dangerous foe of all.
>Kozo never made it into an infantry division. Instead, his path was channeled into officer
candidate school in the countryside just beyond the western edges of Tokyo's outlying
Shinjuku district. There, his military indoctrination was furthered by teachers from the
Imperial War College, and there, he experienced his first limpse of the slightest shadow of the
smallest doubt that crept from the remotest corner of his young and idealistic mind. Although
the imperial Showa Emperor's nation was only one year into t e Pacific war, Kozo felt that
under the guidance of these unenlightened generals with such limited vision, Japan would be
destroyed, whether his country won or lost the battles.
>In the Japanese army intelligence school, Kozo finally felt that he had found a home. In the
remote Toyama Gakko, far from the classrooms and drilling fields in which he had been
educated in the conventional aspects of twentieth-century warfare, he met a radically different
group of military thinkers. These were more like the modern phantom warriors he had known
in his family. Veterans of the decades-long intelligence seiges of Manchuria and Russia, men
like Takamatsu, Fujita, and Ishitani completely reversed the lessons dispensed in the staff and
line officers' schools. Subtlety replaced boldness. Versatility replaced commanding presence.
Enduring the contempt of others replaced vying for political approval and endorsement. This
was' the Japanese military known only by a handful of men.
>In a shocking first lesson, the young officer had been loaded onto a bus with twenty-three
other cadets and bounced and tumbled over the worst of mountain roads through the town of
Nenjiro and into the surrealistic military compound that would be their home for the next nine
months. Upon arriving at the camp gate, the twenty-four officer candidates were herded
brusquely into a barrack with no furniture and seated on the bare floor. The grilling then
began.

>Their training officer had barely introduced himself as Captain Takumi Kusakabe before
launching into a demanding examination of all that the two dozen men and women had
noticed while passing through the town of Neniro. Completely taken aback for a moment, the
intelligence candidates slowly began coming up with observations. The prefectural building
was seen in the center of town. The river seemed to head to the west of the town. The high
school was in the northern part of the business sector. The captain forced observations from
the junior officers for a full twenty minutes before breaking off the exchange.
>Captain Kusakabe then informed everyone that the exercise had been a dismal failure. As
intelligence agents they would all make excellent tour guides, he further barbed. From this
moment on, Takumi Kusakabe stated firmly, their primary focus was to be on procuring useful
information that could assist the conventional planners and forces in bringing about as
economical and scientific a victory as possible.
>The intense captain then retraced the route of the students bus, calling out questions based
on what the agents could have seen. How many radio towers did you see? What does that tell
you about this area's contact with cities and regions beyond? How easy would it be to seize
control of communications if we needed to invade the town? How many adult males did you
see on the street, and what does that percentage tell you about the number of people who are
inside all the offices and factories? What was the quality of the clothing that people were
wearing? What does that tell you about how hard pressed the area is, or about how difficult it
would be to buy up the loyalties of some of the locals for assistance in intelligence or
subterfuge work? The intelligence captain spoke on uninterrupted for another twenty minutes,
pouring out questions and further inquiries based on those questions.
>As well-trained as Kozo was, he was impressed with this man and his people.
>As the months flew by, Kozo was exposed to intensive language work, developing a
proficiency in English, Chinese, and Burmese dialects. Like movie sets, models of enemy
communities were used to create a realistic feel to the training exercises. He experienced
simulated action in replicated streets of Rangoon, Sidney, and Los Angeles. He learned how to
operate radio communications and encoding equipment. He learned tactics for smuggling
people and goods under the watchful eyes of those whose job it was to maintain the integrity
of borders and encampments. He received instruction in the effective analysis of intelligence
material. He was ordered to memorize the code names of cultivated agents already in place
and actively engaged in Southeast Asia, and of those dormantly placed in the United States of
America. He learned shirtsleeve formulas for transforming automobile and household
maintenance materials into improvised explosives and incendiaries.
>In a low-key graduation ceremony carefully restricted to the teachers and candidates of the
intelligence school only, it was announced that Kozo would be assigned to a position in
Burma, and once things fell into place, reassigned to the United States following the defeat of
that nation at the hands of Imperial Japan. Under a code name himself, military intelligence
officer Matsutani was shipped out for Burma in the fall of 1944.
>
>Within a few weeks of arriving at his new post, Kozo had another fleeting premonition that
his course and the course of his nation were intertwined and slipping toward eventual disaster.
The clandestine historical files maintained by his regional supervisor, the intelligence major
he was assigned to support, were placed at his disposal. As Kozo voraciously consumed the
material to better prepare himself for his tasks he began to realize that battles won and-lost
data, and enemy troop strength information, which were collected, recorded, and forwarded to
Tokyo did not at all match what he had read in Japanese newspapers at home. According to
what Kozo had discovered, the British presence in Japanese Burma's neighboring India was
far more substantial and devastating than the Japanese public was lead to believe. The

Americans were regularly and successfully flying supplies over "the hump" to Kunming,
completely undaunted by Japanese control of the Burma Road.
>In occasional skirmishes, the Imperial troops did command the upper hand, but by spring of
1945, Japans prospects of quickly flattening the American military machine and the remnants
of the British land forces seemed ever more remote. All that appeared in the Japanese press,
however, were stories that magnified Japans minor wins into war-turning triumphs. The
average Japanese worker heard virtually nothing of Japans losses or that control of the
empire was slowly being wrested away from the Emperor's enforcers.
>The young intelligence officer continued on tirelessly in his work nonetheless. His heart still
held onto the hope that if enough of his people worked especially diligently, the tides of war
could be turned back and Japan would eventually emerge victorious. No scouting mission was
too dangerous for agent Matsutani. No secondhand rumors were believable enough without
crossverification. No risk was too terrifying. No enemy counteragents were skilled or
tenacious enough to resist being terminated by the Imperial Army's man behind the scenes in
Southeast Asia. When the job called for it, Kozo brought all his ninja skills to bear.
>Ultimately, the thoroughness with which Kozo went about his assignment was the key to
unlocking a naggingly persistent mystery that had haunted him from his first days in Burma.
Once uncovered, the heartbreaking answer to the puzzle had shaken the young intelligence
agent to the core.
>Through his probes into the local black market networks, which he often used to gain
information on the activities of the antioccupation underground, Kozo discovered that the two
sides opposing each other in the war were not necessarily as black and white as the average
Japanese foot soldier might imagine. Multileveled inquiries produced evidence that certain
well-known Japanese zaibatsu family business cartels were generating profits from both sides
of the battle lines. The national companies were, of course, generating business by supplying
the Japanese military effort throughout the south Pacific. What few people realized, however,
was the fact that several of the conglomerates were also garnering profits through welldisguised subsidiary operations that served those forces that were supposed to be the enemies
of Japan. Either way the war went, profits continued on in a healthy flow. If either side tended
to get the better of the other for awhile in the remote Burma theater, that was fine. There
would always be someone there who needed to buy, ship, or sell something. just as long as the
war never came to an end, the power and profit machine established by certain merchant
organizations, and by strategically placed military officers, would serve itself quite well.
>Kozo was painfully aware of the fact that the zaibatsu collection of companies built up by
his grandfather Takezo was not at all a part of the three-way overlap operation in the Burmese
arena. The Matsutani companies were barely a part of even routine, healthy trade anymore in
those days. His research-carried out under the disguise of official inquiry, of course-revealed
that the Matsutani family had fallen on bad times because of their unwillingness to work
cooperatively with the prevailing right-wing interests behind the facade of Emperor Hirohito's
power.
>With rapidly diminishing confidence, Kozo found himself flirting with the potential of
admitting that his grandfather may have been right from the beginning. Kozo Matsutani, great
patriot and servant of the emperor's national family, may have been duped into playing the
pawn in a chess game so enormously grand in scale that no one but the principal players were
even aware of its existence.
>From the day of unearthing the private scandal, Kozo grew less and less able to face the
futility of the demands of his position. By the summer of 1945, he had been transformed. He
had become a man tortured by the knowledge that his noble intentions had been perverted by
those whose personal desires included not only surviving the inevitable defeat of their nation,

but destroying the commercial interests of the family he had abandoned as well, as they went
about finding scapegoats to hold up to the conquering Western powers.
>The abrupt conclusion of the war in the Pacific put an end to Kozo's soul-shredding
dilemma. He was no longer an intelligence agent haunted by the knowledge that he had killed
and had others kill for him only to increase the profits of those conspirators who, among other
things, worked for the downfall of his family and ancestral heritage. He was a war criminal to
be hunted down by British and American forces, which wished to see him imprisoned or
executed for his role in the war.
>His heart cried out in pain and grief over the unforgivable anguish that he had caused his
parents, brothers, and grandfather. He could never face them again after the disgrace he had
brought upon himself. There was no way that he could allow himself to stand trial under the
Allied military court, and have the world know of the Matsutani family's shame over his
foolish conduct. Honorable seppuku was not even open to him, because word of his suicide
would be just as humiliating to his family as his walking into a courtroom for sentencing.
Kozo knew that the only answer was to disappear from the face of the earth, utterly and
forever.
>Adopting the saffron yellow robes of the Burmese monks that he had once been in charge of
persecuting for abetting the underground resistance movement, Kozo vanished into the
jungles of the countryside and wandered north from his defunct duty station. His fluency in
the Burmese dialects allowed him to become a part of a small settlement of Buddhist monks
who traveled out from their decimated temple to tend to the work of rebuilding postwar
Burma. He joined what the monks referred to as the "field of merit" and vowed to live out his
life in service to others as an atonement for the brutal rashness of his youth.
>As he continued to wander ever more westward and northward, passing through
reconstruction settlements in Yesagyo, Alon, and Kalewa along the Chindwin River, Kozo
was humbled by the gentle and undemanding acceptance of the holy men who welcomed him
always and never failed to share even scant rations with him. Gradually the months became
years, the footsteps became miles, and the piercing anguish that still haunted Kozo's heart
slowly mellowed and matured. Though he would never shake the specter of the memory of
his sin, he did, in time, make peace with it.
>Always on the move, settling in one area only long enough to donate his strength to the
repayment of his spiritual debt before tarrying to the point of risking eventual recognition,
Kozo drifted north. His uncharted path lead him upward through the Assam and across the
Brahmaputra River, and then by accident into and over the bleak unknown stretches of the
frozen and forbidding peaks of the Himalaya Mountains.
>Staggering in semiconsciousness down the northern side of the Himalayan ridge, twentythousand feet above the height of his boyhood home in Iga, Kozo was rescued by a band of
nomadic yak herders. Found on the very brink of death by starvation and exposure, Kozo was
eventually nurtured back to health. There among the cheerful nomads with their heavy wool
felt tents, Kozo settled down to learn the Tibetan dialect spoken by his rescuers. In celebration
of his rebirth from the jaws of certain death, the once tortured Japanese intelligence officer,
born of the Matsutani ryu ninjutsu tradition, finally discarded the last remnants of his old
identity.
>From the time of his recovery, when he was able at last to hold onto consciousness long
enough to speak once again, Kozo Matsutani was known by a new name given to him by the
Tibetan nomads who had temporarily settled along the shores of Lake Yamdrok.
>They called him Thangme.
>
>
>Chapter 12

>
>Ken Odate walked naked from the pale yellow bathroom into the spacious bedroom of his
quarters in the Hong Kong Island Wellington Hotel. His bare feet enjoyed the stimulating feel
of the tight-loop pile of the beige carpeting as it rubbed against his moving soles. The
Matsutani ryu ninja used one towel in each hand to rub the bulk of the water out of his wet
black hair. He paused to view the hard leanness of his body in the room's full-length mirror,
and then moved closer to the glass to peer intently at the reflection of his face. Half Japanese,
half European, it was a face that took fortunate traits from both sources. Some would consider
the face handsome, while others would comment that by classical standards it was a bit
narrow, a bit drawn, giving the young man a slightly sinister cast. The faint tint of purple
below the eyes hinted at his lack of sleep over the past week.
>His body was important to him. In the deadly profession that had been chosen for him,
physical indestructability was a close second in importance only to the force of intention
demonstrated through quick wits. Ken was paid to maintain his body and mind as a doubleedged weapon, poised to wound or terminate the lives of others when the survival of his
extended family demanded it.
>Ken stepped into a pair of cream-colored linen trousers and pulled a chocolate, V-necked
velour shirt over his head. A velcro strapped nylon holster secured the small Heckler & Koch
9mm pistol to his left calf, above the light brown leather of the agent's hand-made Italian
shoes.
>He checked the Seiko watch as he strapped it on his left wrist and saw that he was right on
time. The meeting with Toshiro Kanda, project head for this stage of the operation, and the
rest of the Hisatsutai troop was set for eight.
>Odate arranged the motion detector, built into the binding of what appeared to be a harmless
novel, to begin scanning ninety seconds after he closed his door on the way out. If anyone
entered his room during his absence, he would know of it upon his return. The young agent
picked up an off-white bush jacket and slung it over his shoulder, just in case Karl or Yoshi or
any of the others decided to go out for a bite after their meeting. October evenings in Hong
Kong were generally warm, but had a way of turning chilly without warning.
>In the rising elevator, Ken met Barbara on her way to the eight o'clock meeting as well. The
female Hisatsutai agent was wearing a pair of dark blue designer jeans and a white bulky
sweater with a rolled neck so loose that it exposed the upper portions of her suntanned breasts.
A thick gold chain was draped around her waist over the sweater.
>Though they arrived at the designated suite two minutes before eight, Kenichi and Barbara
found that they were the last ones to arrive. In addition to the other four agents who had
traveled from Chicago with them, the meeting included Kitagawa and his niece, and the
strange monk character who had turned out to be Kozo Matsutani, back from the dead.
>The Matsutani Shoji Ltd. central suite in the Wellington Hotel looked out over Victoria
Harbor from the building's position on Victoria Park Road in the Hong Kong sector known as
Causeway Bay. Through the wall-sized picture window that dominated the conference parlor
of the suite of rooms, colorfully lighted tugs and tour boats and tall-masted sailing vessels
bobbed at anchor in the glistening black waters below. The evening's revelers and returning
businessmen crowded the neon-lit street between the hotel and the water with a jerking, hornblaring, two-way stream of what Barbara had described as battered chrome-plated rolling
suicide attempts. These Hong Kong cabbies made Tokyo's kamikaze taxis look like funeral
drivers solemnly on their way to the burial park, she had sworn.
>Toru Kitagawa was already in midlecture as the two joined the rest on sofas in the
conference parlor of the suite. "Haitte, haitte. We were just going over some detail collecting.
You haven't missed anything."

>Barbara slid onto a couch arm, halfway into the lap of Seiji Iwate who patted her thigh
paternally. Ken sat on the carpet with his legs folded under the edge of the coffee table.
>"I was just mentioning that the chairman's brother Kozo would be accompanying us to
Kashmir. We've changed some plans, that is why I am here now. His command of the
language and familiarity with the people there will be of great aid to us, as we have none of
our own agents there in covert roles." The senior Kitagawa nodded slightly toward the figure
seated on the couch in front of him.
>Kozo Matsutani sat in the center of the gray brocade couch with his arms extended out to
drape along the backrest behind him. He was wearing a maroon crew-necked sweater with the
sleeves shoved halfway up his arms. Maroon trousers extended down to white, low-cut
running shoes. His brother Hitoshi had personally taken him shopping in Kumamoto before
putting him on the plane with the Kitagawas. From what Ken had seen of the strange little
man yesterday and today, he seemed to like the color maroon.
>Odate thought the timing of the man's return was most suspicious, in light of the current
threat against the family. Their Kaicho the corporate chairman of the board, however, was
convinced that this unusual character was indeed his separated brother. In an extended
conversation held right there in the chairman's office, the stranger in the maroon shawl
claiming to be Kozo Matsutani had given all the right answers to the difficult and probing
personal questions directed at him. Visibly shaken, Hitoshi had taken the man home with him
in his limousine that afternoon.
>Kozo leaned forward from the edge of the sofa and picked up a short thick Chinese cup of
dark brown tea. "Everyone here?" he asked in extremely casual Japanese. Kanda nodded
affirmatively and the repatriated Matsutani began his description of the northern reaches of
the Kashmir state an the Ladahk range of the Himalayas. After leaving their first refugee
settlement in Sikkim, he explained, Kozo had gone north across India with a group of monks
who followed a leader referred to as the Gyelsop Lama.
>With some reservations, Ken watched the sinewy speaker as he went on with his
presentation. He was said to be somewhere around sixty years old, but hardly looked older
than the late forties. For a revered monk, an incarnated holy man, ("tulku," they had called
him), the man on the couch before him did not appear to be a very holy or solemn individual
in Ken's eyes. He was far too casual, too worldly, with his beaming smiles, animated gestures,
and what had to be described as childlike sense of mirth. He had totally confused Ken and the
other Hisatsutai agents at yesterday's breakfast with his light humor and refusal to be treated
as a high-ranking holy man.
>At the same time, this Kozo did not at all behave like what they had expected of a warrior
trained for decades in the Matsutani ryu ninjutsu tradition and the old Imperial Japanese
military intelligence school. This scattered lightweight was the shadow scourge of wartime
Burma? This was the phantom monk who singlehandedly held off the Red Chinese Army in
their pursuit of the Dalai Lama? The angular little man in maroon looked to be the least likely
candidate for the description that had been whispered with awe among the Hisatsutai
members outside of official conferences. Kozo Matsutani looked utterly harmless.
>"Arigato." Kanda thanked Kozo for his assistance and turned his attention toward the agents
gathered in the suite he shared with Toru Kitagawa.
>"I want to remind you that this whole situation is most unusual. We of the Hisatsutai force
are here to lend backup to our fellow Musasabishu agents. I do not need to remind you again
to be aware that none of those agents have any idea at all that there even exists such an entity
as the 'force that never fails.' As far as they are concerned, all of us are 'flying squirrel'
operatives just as they are." The five agents nodded in silent affirmation.
>"We are here because of the extremely grave nature of the threat that is poised against our
future. It is highly unlikely that any direct action on our part will be required, at least at this

stage of the operation. Ozawa-san wanted our backup just in case of any sudden emergency,
however."
>Kanda moved to a large art board diagram that stood on an easel. Thick, dark blue lines
showed the floor plan of a long L-shaped building. "Tomorrow afternoon, three of you will
accompany two of our Hong Kong Musasabishu operatives into the Ying Chuk warehouse
complex. Their job is to scout for any information concerning the cylinders we discussed
yesterday. The objective as it stands now is to identify the cylinders here and to surreptitiously
replace them with dummies in Delhi, and then be on the lookout for whoever comes to claim
them in Kashmir.
>"While the three agents accompany the 'flying squirrel' ninja from Hong Kong, two more of
us will be set up as observation scouts here," Kanda pointed to a side street corner on the
diagram and then slid his finger around to the back of the building, "and here. That's just in
case any unexpected arrivals appear."
>Kanda tapped on the art board. "The Ying Chuk shipping offices are here, and there is a
security checkpoint entrance here. They do not have one of our Eigo Keibi security systems,
so we are going to have to wedge our way in during the day. It will be a little tougher, but
posing as customs agents should buy us the time and access we need." Turning back to the
board and pointing, Kanda continued. "This section here is small parcels, so you can limit
your search to this area near the loading dock door.
>"We'll go in wired for transmission from the site. In any emergency, Emi will be monitoring
all operations and will work as a relay. She will work out of one of ' the rooms in this suite,
where it is high enough to pick up and transmit to individual units on the street that may be
separated by blocks of buildings."
>Emi sat on the couch listening to the explanation as though it were not she that was being
discussed. Ken looked over at Kitagawa's niece. Like so many other male operatives in the
Matsutani intelligence group, Ken did not quite know how to regard Emi outside her role as
an electronics expert who supported their work. She was beautiful, actually striking in her
appearance. He noticed her long legs in the lavender slacks. Who were her friends, and did
she have a lover? Ken did not know anyone who had ever been to bed with her, or who had
spoken of it if he had. So aloof seeming, or did the reputation of her uncle overshadow
anything that she could be as a female companion? There was actually a sense of innocence
about her, despite her worldly looks.
>Emi caught Ken staring at her. She turned her gaze toward him and he smiled, slightly
embarrassed to have been caught with his mind on matters other than their strategy session.
Like a little girl, it seemed to him, she smiled back and looked away.
>"One last point," Kanda continued. "This warehouse is an undedicated free market
operation. To our best knowledge, it is not controlled by the Red Chinese or Russians or even
the Hong Kong triad gangs. That means that the usual guard force should not be aware of
anything unusual going on. There is always the possibility that our unknown enemy has
restaffed the security positions with their own people, though. Don't take anything for granted
on this one."
>From his position halfway under Barbara on the couch arm, Seiji Iwate asked, "There is still
no word on who it is we are up against?"
>The team leader was abrupt. "No. Unless we make some sort of unexpected breakthrough
here, in addition to getting the description of the cylinders, we won't know the answer to that
question until we get to Ladakh."
>"Security at the warehouse is manned by a company named Tri Seas. They work Hong Kong
as a branch, but are based in Singapore. Our Hong Kong man is working on wedging in one
of our own people as a Tri-Seas guard if it doesn't look like there is anybody on the Ying
Chuk duty roster that we can buy off. He doesn't have many leads in that area, though."

>Kanda picked up what appeared to be a suit on a hanger inside a dry cleaner's bag. "Odate,
this is yours for tomorrow. You will go in as a Tri-Seas supervisor instructed to accompany
Hong Kong customs."
>The powerfully built team leader turned to Nishimura and Iwate, a plastic-covered suit on a
hanger in each hand. "The two of you will go in as the customs agents. Be tough, bully them a
little, see if you can get them scared that you are onto some code violation. I'm sure there is
some sort of minor crime that they must be hiding. With all the laws imposed by all of Hong
Kong's international customers concerning what can and cannot be shipped and all the endless
tax tables and sliding scales, it would be impossible to be in the shipping business these days
without breaking some sort of law even by accident."
>"What about these firearms?" Barbara asked, pointing to the boxes on the broad coffee table.
>"Appropriate to carry them in plain sight as part of the uniform, but use them as an
absolutely last resort. We have to avoid drawing any attention to ourselves here in order for
switch-off plans in Delhi to be effective." With a quick smile, Kanda added, "The
management would be most happy if it turns out to be a big waste of time for their Hisatsutai
to have been in Hong Kong on this operation."
>The remaining agents were given instructions concerning their observation point stakeout,
and the electronic communications gear they would use to get word to the Matsutani agents
inside the warehouse in case the disguised operatives needed warning. Fresh copies of the
shipping manifests from Seoul were given to the three inside agents, along with copies to be
given to the two 'flying squirrel' agents who would join them as security lookouts tomorrow.
>"Anything else that we should handle as a group, before we break up into our informal
planning units?"
>Kozo turned from his position in front of the panoramic window that looked out and down
across the night expanse of Victoria Harbor. Like a schoolchild trapped in the classroom while
spring's blossoming trees beckoned and teased alluringly from an open window next to his
desk, Kozo had gotten up halfway through the strategy session and wandered about the
conference parlor. He had curiously examined some of the Chinese art objects that had been
placed in the room and had ended up in front of the window. There he had remained, staring
in fascination at the kaleidoscopic patterns of twinkling colored lights that danced on the
waters so far below them.
>With his back to the blackness of the window behind him, the tulku had made a request.
"Would it be all right for me to go to the warehouse, too?"
>There had been an awkward moment of silence. Finally, Toru Kitagawa had spoken to
answer for the surprised and discomforted assembly gathered around the coffee table. "Well, it
could turn out to be quite a dangerous situation if all does not go according to plan."
>"Yes, I know that," replied the ever-casual monk. "That's why I thought it might be a good
idea for me to be along."
>
>Chapter 13
>Sonny Chen would have been appalled to learn that he was working for communists. Street
slick and open to any well-paying scam, the twenty-six-year-old tenement baron was working
for some high rollers, and that was all that qualified the contract for him. Might even be his
way into one of the Tongs, he flattered himself. Like so many others of Hong Kong's wasted
street youth population, Chen fancied himself as some sort of movie land antihero. Do a little
alley fighting, a little bit of drugs, a lot of drinking, a lot of time in the whorehouse hotels on
the edge of the Wanchai, and pick up the cash wherever it grew.
>Chen carried a colorful fold of Hong Kong dollars in his left front pocket and a promise for
three times that much if he came through as he said he would. He never dreamed that he could

be working for a pack of communist assassins though. But then, greed is greed. Perhaps it
would not have even bothered gangland hopeful Sonny Chen.
>This Sun Ling furniture market with its garish neon storefront showroom was the address
given to him by his boss Chang Man Lao. Sonny Chen, blue shirt collar flipped up along the
back of his neck and cigarette dangling out of his mouth, double-checked the numbers on the
door frame against the numbers on the slip of paper he was holding. He walked through the
confusion and shouting of the sales area to a small louvered door in the back. Behind the
yellow door, a dimly lit carpetless hallway lead to a narrow flight of stairs that ascended to a
collection of doors at the top of a trash strewn landing.
> Chen knocked and the door flew open and he was staring into a dark, mean-looking
European face with a set of narrow crazed brown eyes. Sonny Chen, never intimidated by a
fellow intimidator stared right back through the brown-tinted lenses of his sunglasses. "I'm
here to see Kwon."
> Cresc the Albanian backed into the room Pulling the door with him. The Hong Kong street
tough followed the man into a small dirty apartment sitting room. Styrofoam Plates smeared
with the hardening remains of past carryout meals had been left on a red wooden table. Empty
Tsingtao beer bottles were stacked along the baseboard of the wall behind the table. A
dilapidated sofa and three well-worn chairs were grouped around a small coffee table strewn
with piles of cigarette butts.
> In the chair farthest from the door sat a European with a stocky build and short bristling oily
hair. He wore a dark brown sport shirt buttoned at the collar. The pale green eyes in the chalky
Slavic face stared out at Chen without interest. The man said nothing.
> "I'm supposed to give him this number and this name. Kwon is supposed to receive it
personally."
> "Mister Kwon will be with you in a moment." With tightened lips, Cresc hammered on the
"Mister" before Kwon's name. "Sit down."
> "I'll stand," asserted Chen. The street punk would do anything to avoid being told what to
do. Cresc ignored him and disappeared behind a grubby door that had long ago seen its last
coat of white paint. Sonny Chen looked around the room.
> Inside the next room, Cresc stood to the side of the door and watched two silent figures
move in cautious opposition to each other. The pair had locked eyes across the bare wooden
floor and were now vying for psychological domination. Both were stripped to the waist and
wore loose black cotton trousers secured beneath their ribs with wide crimson silk sashes. The
fighter named Hsu moved in lateral weaves on fast-moving feet. Il Nam Kwon maintained
heavily flexed knees and seemed to pull himself forward by curling and relaxing his toes
against the wood of the flooring. Both men perspired heavily from the continued exertion of
their stairs that ascended to a collection of doors at the top of a trash-strewn landing.
>Chen knocked and the door flew open and he was staring into a dark, mean-looking
European face with a set of narrow crazed brown eyes. Sonny Chen, never intimidated by a
fellow intimidator, stared right back through the brown-tinted lenses of his sunglasses. "I'm
here to see Kwon."
>Cresc the Albanian backed into the room pulling the door with him. The Hong Kong street
tough followed the man into a small dirty apartment sitting room. Styrofoam plates smeared
with the hardening remains of past carryout meals had been left on a red wooden table. Empty
Tsingtao beer bottles were stacked along the baseboard of the wall behind the table. A
dilapidated sofa and three well-worn chairs were grouped around a small coffee table strewn
with piles of cigarette butts.
>In the chair farthest from the door sat a European with a stocky build and short bristling oily
hair. He wore a dark brown sport shirt buttoned at the collar. The pale green eyes in the chalky
Slavic face stared out at Chen without interest. The man said nothing.

>"I'm supposed to give him this number and this name. Kwon is supposed to receive it
personally."
>"Mister Kwon will be with you in a moment." With tightened lips, Cresc hammered on the
"Mister" before Kwon's name. "Sit down."
>"I'll stand," asserted Chen. The street punk would do anything to avoid being told what to
do. Cresc ignored him and disappeared behind a grubby door that had long ago seen its last
coat of white paint. Sonny Chen looked around the room.
>Inside the next room, Cresc stood to the side of the door and watched two silent figures
move in cautious opposition to each other. The pair had locked eyes across the bare wooden
floor and were now vying for psychological domination. Both were stripped to the waist and
wore loose black cotton trousers secured beneath their ribs with wide crimson silk sashes. The
fighter named Hsu moved in lateral weaves on fast-moving feet. Il Nam Kwon maintained
heavily flexed knees and seemed to pull himself forward by curling and relaxing his toes
against the wood of the flooring. Both men perspired heavily from the continued exertion of
their training. Hsu the Chinese shaolin fighter held himself high and lightly. Kwon the North
Korean kwonbhup fighter remained low and immovable.
>Hsu suddenly screamed and shot forth with a rising reaching right leg to swat from the right
and then the left at Kwon's head. The movement had been as quick as a snake darting from its
hole to snatch its prey, but the Korean had lifted his massive left arm in a bent position,
reaching back over his left shoulder with his left hand to thwart the blows. The narrow bones
along the top of the Chinese fighter's right foot crashed excruciatingly into the hard knob of
bone that was Kwon's elbow. The North Korean assassin then leisurely lifted his left shin
upward and allowed his sparring partner's thighs to direct the strike into its target. The groin
strike folded the Chinese fighter. A heavy forearm blow to the back of Hsu's neck drove him
to the floor with a booming wet thud.
>Only then did Kwon look over toward the wall against which Cresc leaned in silent
observation. The Albanian wordlessly nodded his head toward the door and the room beyond
it. Kwon nodded back in understanding. The big man walked away from the downed Chinese
who gasped and struggled to get to his hands and knees. The North Korean picked up a towel
and the clothes that he had folded on the floor neatly. His daily workout was over.
>Chuckling quietly, the huge form of II Nam Kwon emerged from behind the same door that
had consumed Cresc only moments earlier. The big man was wearing white trousers under an
untucked Philippine-style muslin shirt with patterns of embroidered ventilation holes up and
down the front. Sonny Chen was startled by the man's size. He was mammoth, with a chest
like a wall and legs as big around as utility poles. Though completely taken aback by the
man's awesome dimensions, Chen fought to remain unruffled on the outside. Above all else,
he had to keep his cool.
>"I am Kwon," the giant offered with the smallest of smiles, enjoying the thought of what he
knew must be going on in the mind of Chang Man Lao's runner. "You have something for
me?"
>Chen rolled the piece of paper between his fingers. "A name. An address and phone
number."
>Kwon the assassin detested humoring idiots who did not know the wisdom of normal
professional courtesy. He restrained himself from crushing the man and asked for the slip of
paper. Chen handed it over and quickly pulled his arm back, as though he were afraid of being
burned.
>Kwon read the information out loud. He had been given the name of a Japanese beef
importing company and the company's suite number in a Causeway Bay hotel. The name and
numbers were meaningless to him.
>"How did you come up with this?"

>The Hong Kong runner slid the frames of his sunglasses up onto his forehead and looked
Kwon in the eye. "Lao got in touch with me because the Ying Chuk warehouse was in my
territory. My boys know everything that goes on in the neighborhood there. He told me he
needed to know when some information was passed on, and where it went. I told him I was
his man. I own those streets."
>This punk is a real showman, thought Kwon to himself. He nodded the Chinese on.
>I do the people work, he rigs up the hardware. That's our agreement," continued Sonny
Chen. "Lao tapped their lines and I ran my ass off tracking down where the odd calls went,
the ones that were obviously not business-related. He seemed to think that whoever it was he
wanted to find out about would have some sort of plant in the warehouse. We found the plant.
Some poor son of a bitch that owed the world to the street gambling establishment. Into him
good. He was the first suspect I pointed out," bragged the small-time criminal. "I know those
types and who they are. All of them."
>Chen lit another cigarette and talked around the slim white cylinder in his mouth. "I found
one of the destinations that seemed to mean something to Lao. He had some kind of lowdown
on it. Lao has hundreds of Hong Kong eyes and ears working for him. We checked it out.
Really odd. These guys had rented it and paid a lot of money for it and then didn't move a
thing into the place. Nothing in there but a telephone and some towels in the bathroom. Lao
had some sucker's granny in the building keeping her eye on who came and went."
>The North Korean raised his hand to stop the Chinese. "How does that get us to these
Japanese beef people?"
>"Lao had that apartment phone tapped, too. And all we got was one call from that phone. A
voice said in Japanese that the 'expected one was waiting' and then hung up. That was it, the
only call. The granny said she saw a man, a Chinese, leave the apartment right after that call
was logged on Lao's recorder. Pretty suspicious, huh?" Sonny Chen pointed toward the piece
of paper in Kwon's hand. "The call went there."
>"When was this?"
>"The call? Yesterday."
>"And who are these Sugiyama Beef Company people who received the only call made from
the empty apartment, and what do they have to do with me?"
>Chen grinned. "Well in the first place, I don't think they are here to contract any shipments
of beef. Some of my boys have been tailing these people. They seem to have other interests.
These Japanese are headquartered out of that hotel suite." Chen pointed to the slip of paper.
>"I couldn't get in there to check it out myself. I tried a few schemes but got cut off each time.
I finally sat down at the end of the hall near an air conditioning unit, pretending to be a
repairman, and watched who came and went.
>"All of them are Japanese. A good-sized group, but nobody dressed like Japanese
businessmen. The room itself seems to be rented to this one older guy, looks to be in his
sixties. Kind of small, tough-looking guy. You ought to see the girlfriend he brought along. I
watched them go down the hall together. She was hugging his arm." Chen shook his head and
grinned again. "Ought to be illegal to waste a chick like that on some old guy. What a piece."
>"Japanese businessmen, eh?" Kwon pronounced the words slowly, his mind moving like a
machine on its way toward producing a completed idea. Could it be that Japanese intelligence
had agreed to get involved for the sake of saving one of their country's corporations? Another
thought, dim at first but glowing ever brighter, dawned in Kwon's consciousness. Could it be
that these industrialists themselves were moving privately to thwart their plans?
>"Well, what does Lao propose next? How do we find out more on these imitation Japanese
businessmen with their beautiful girlfriends?"
>Chen spoke rapidly, enjoying the confidence that was being

>placed in him. "Lao has some people in the Wellington. They owe him some favors, some
big favors. What we can do is arrange to get a key to the suite and then wait for them to leave.
I can scour the place and see what we turn up in the way of information."
>Kwon pondered the options and decided to delay any direct tactics just yet. "All right, fine.
Have your Mr. Lao make his arrangements. Mr. Orosov here will accompany you on the
search. He has a better idea of exactly what it is we are looking for. Technical information,
you know. Material that would not be of much interest to you or Mr. Lao."
>"Sure. That can be arranged."
>"Thank you Mr.... ? I did not get your name."
>"Chen. Sonny Chen."
>"Thank you, Mr. Chen." Kwon the assassin knew well enough to humor the self-important
Hong Kong street punk. These lean and hungry types would bend over backward to please if
treated like kingpins. That had been part of the psychological tactics that Kwon had been
taught during his years at the intelligence school. For successful dealings in the capitalists'
world, treat the plain folks like bosses and treat the bosses like plain folks. For successful
manipulation of the women, treat the whores like queens and treat the queens like whores.
Worked every time.
>Emboldened, Chen took a chance and went on. "Mr. Kwon, you know Lao is good, no doubt
about it. But some think he is getting to be a little bit too comfortable these days."
>He paused to get a feel for any reaction from Kwon. He knew he was stepping way out onto
thin ice, but thought the gamble worth it. Kwon regarded him levelly with no change in
outward demeanor.
>"I have a lot of contacts myself. I know what goes on in this town. Perhaps I could be of use
to you in a more, well let's say 'direct' manner, if you know what I mean. I could work for you
without the middleman arrangement and all that extra expense on your part, if something like
that is of interest to you."
>Kwon knew that Chang Man Lao must have some sort of hold on this man named Chen:
gambling, whores, drugs, family scandal, some sort of debtor relationship. Chen was probably
doing all of Lao's legwork for no money or next to nothing. Kwon knew that slave labor,
whether by means of economics or blackmail, created hard workers for awhile, but eventually
produced disloyalty. Only extreme idealism or total fear kept people in line. This bastard,
Chen, was reaching the end of his service life. He was growing tired of being someone else's
boy. That made him a very dangerous risk.
> "You know, Mr. Chen, we could probably find a place for a man with your kind of
boldness." The massive Korean peeled his lips back to let out a short barking laugh. "When
we finish all this business at the Wellington Hotel and the Ying Chuk warehouse, come back
to talk to me personally, without Lao in the picture this time."
> Chen grinned heartily. These men just might turn out to be his ticket to freedom and then
power. "I will do that," he said nodding slowly at first and then more rapidly. "I will do that."
> The Chinese raised two extended fingers to his forehead in a cocky little imitation of a
salute, pulled his sunglasses down over his eyes, and left through the door leading to the
staircase. Kwon and Orosov heard his footfalls fade as the street man of Chang Man Lao
returned to his realm in the bustling underworld of the island crown colony.
>Kwon turned to the Bulgarian. "Let him set it up. Go to the hotel with him and see what you
can bring back. This could be something worth following up."
>Orosov nodded.
>"And by the way," Kwon added in flat tones, "when you are done with Chen, kill him. Lao
will owe us another favor then."
>
>Chapter 14

>The three Hisatsutai, disguised in their various personas, sat on the blue vinyl bench seats of
the compact white English Ford sedan. To avoid the remote possibility of being spotted
leaving the Wellington, the agents had been shuttled to a special Hong Kong safehouse that
had been arranged on short notice for this project alone. There they had changed from civilian
attire into the uniforms supplied by Toshiro Kanda the night before.
>The stream of traffic that carried them breezed down sunny Nathan Road, cut east, and
burrowed under Victoria Harbor through the Cross Harbor underwater tunnel to emerge once
again in the sunlight of Causeway Bay, the agents' original departure point. As in Japan, the
drivers of Hong Kong kept to the left side of the roads, passing the approaching flow on their
right.
>No one in the small sedan had spoken since leaving the safehouse. The plans had been
changed at the last moment. The Tri-Seas Security company had proven too difficult to
subvert, so their attempt to use a counterfeit security guard would be a greater gamble than
they had hoped originally. Therefore, the three Hisatsutai agents would enter the warehouse
without the accompaniment of the Musasabishu ninja. That way, if things did turn violent at
the last moment, there would be fewer persons to be responsible for.
> The driver concentrated on the road while the three agents went through their mental
preparations. Kenichi Odate adjusted the white collar of his Tri-Seas Security uniform,
wondering what had become of Kozo Matsutani, who had wanted to come along. He checked
the Seiko watch strapped to his left wrist, and then looked over at the transformation that had
been Barbara Nishimura.
>Barbara's short black hair had been pinned up beneath a flat pillbox uniform cap. A broad
neoprene band had substantially flattened and reduced the thrust of her breasts. Dense foampadded wraps had thickened her waist and so the lean athletic Barbara now sported a
decidedly barrel-shaped body. She had added yellow highlights to her complexion and affected her eyes with lightcolored shading to flatten out the bone structure of her face and
give her a more Chinese appearance. Steel-framed glasses with clear lenses completed the
effect. She looked positively intimidating, dour, and selfless-the model civil servant ready to
go to any lengths to find some form of infraction, no matter how minor, that required policing.
>As a part of their field training, all Matsutani ryu ninja agents were required to earn a
proficiency rating and stay current in the methods of hensojutsu, the phantom warrior's "art of
disguise." Their final test at the training academy had been to create a disguise that was
capable of carrying them by their teachers' sight without notice. The teachers in the ninjutsu
dojo were very aware individuals, and each new class of trainees was required to come up
with ever more far-reaching techniques in order to pass their tests successfully.
>When they arrived at their destination, Ken entered the Ying Chuk office first, effusing an air
of controlled panic and strained authority about to collapse. Barbara and Seiji followed a few
paces behind as the conquering customs agents come to extract justice. Odate spoke to the
receptionist in English. "I am here to accompany these good officers on an unscheduled
examination of our facilities and procedures."
>There was very little room in the front portion of the storage and shipping complex devoted
to customer comforts. A corner to the side of a dust-caked glass door had been set up to house
a combination receptionist and billing clerk. An inexpensive steel -desk, some filing cabinets
stacked on top of one another, and a half-filled water cooler with a collection of labeled cups
on its ledge comprised the entire office. Beyond the reception nook was a wide corridor that
had been partitioned off with a ceiling-high chain-link fence in place of a wall. The meshscreened door in the wall's center was monitored by a guard in a Tri-Seas uniform perched on
a stool behind a short plywood counter. The distant guard wore what appeared to be an Uzi
submachine gun slung over his right shoulder.

> The receptionist, a bright-eyed girl in a brilliant red blouse smiled up at the Tri-Seas
Security officer before her and welcomed him to their office. Obviously new at the job, Ken
deduced. She does not understand what an unannounced customs inspection could mean.
>The beaming receptionist continued on to explain that since they had happened to call at the
noonday meal break, her supervisor would be unable to greet them and conduct the tour they
had requested.
>"That will be fine," asserted Barbara in very British English. "We are not here to see your
supervisor."
>Ken again acted embarrassed, urgent. "I will take responsibility," he said in a lowered voice
to the girl behind the gray metal desk. He pulled a pen from a small cube containing writing
tools and rubber stamps beside the receptionist and reached for the guest log. "I'll just show
them around quickly and get them out of here."
>"Just a moment, sir. This is highly irregular. I will have to get permission before anyone can
even . . ."
>"Here is your permission." Barbara waved a stapled collection of letters and notices in the
flustered girl's face, just long enough to appear to be in order without giving her time to study
carefully the information on the rattling sheets.
>Ken interrupted again. "Is guard supervisor Wong here?" The Matsutani ryu ninja had made
up the name as a blind. Perhaps there even was a guard named Wong on duty. There are more
people in the world with the family name of Wong than any other.
>"Wong? I didn't think we had a Wong here. From Tri-Seas Security?"
>While the receptionist struggled to recall the nonexistent officer Wong, Ken threw her off
once more by asking who was on duty.
>Seiji Iwate, disguised as the second customs investigator, interrupted by handing the girl a
red leather log book that he asked her to sign in acknowledgment of their visit.
>Nervously, she regarded the open volume before her.
>Ken jumped right in to add to the receptionist's bewilderment. "I'll just escort these officials
down to the gate, Pamela. Why don't you have the guard supervisor meet us there?" He had
noticed the girl's name on her desk plate. Perhaps his use of the name would add to the
impression that she really should have recognized the Tri-Seas Security officer who seemed to
know her.
>Without further comment, the stocky female customs agent headed down the storage access
corridor toward the wire mesh door and its guard. The bogus security guard flew after her,
acting as flustered as he could.
>The guard at the door demanded to see Ken's laminated Tri-Seas company identification
chip, which fortunately the disguised agent was able to produce. The guard then demanded
politely to see the customs officer's letter of authorization. Barbara produced a silver metal
badge in a worn leather case and announced that it was all the authorization she needed in her
line of duty.
>When the security guard showed signs of hedging, Ken leaned over the plywood counter of
the duty station and whispered urgent pleadings regarding job security and duty to the Ying
Chuk management. Only he, Ken whispered, could get the woman investigator and her
assistant in and out of the storage bins without them discovering things that they were not
supposed to see.
>The face of the guard on duty twisted in perplexed concern over whatever it was that these
government officials were not supposed to see in the warehouse that he was involved in
keeping secure. Ken bustled Barbara through the door in the moment it took the guard to
hesitate.
>The corridor angled sharply to the left and opened into the main shelving area beyond.
Another guard at the end of the corridor looked up but seemed satisfied with the offered Tri-

Seas ID and the government crests. Besides, if they had gotten this far, he reasoned, they must
have been cleared by the front.
>Once in the storage area, Seiji caught up with Ken and Barbara. They kept on moving until
they were out of sight behind a towering skid of steel barrels.
>Barbara craned her neck staring around them. "Look at this place. It's huge."
>More than a dozen forklift trucks crawled throughout the cavernous warehouse that was
intermediate storage for millions of dollars' worth of goods in transit. For as far as their eyes
could see, there were walls of crates containing refrigerators, unassembled motorcycles,
dinnerware sets, stereo components, telephoto lenses, and baby cribs. Somewhere in there
also lurked a shipment of deadly phosgene gas disguised as what would probably by now look
like harmless welding supplies. It was up to the three Hisatsutai to find and photograph those
cylinders before they were transferred to the air cargo shipper that would send them on to
Delhi.
>"This place is crawling with people, too. Look at them all," the female agent moaned. "This
is going to be tough." Barbara Nishimura had been trained as a fighter and killer, and routine
intelligence gathering was not at all what she enjoyed. She described doing the work of her
cohorts in the Musasabishu as giving her the feeling of having moss on her teeth. The
overwhelmingly dire nature of the threat facing the Matsutani family was the only reason that
the company's lethal hit squad was engaged in work that would normally have been handled
by the 'flying squirrel' clandestine operations group. This adversary, whoever it was, had taken
this game completely out of the bounds of industrial espionage. Thousands of lives and the
entire future of their company were at stake now.
>
>"Where do we start?" Ken asked, more as an expression of resignation than as an actual
question. They had no inside agents working for the warehouse to assist them in finding their
target quickly.
>
>Seiji was moving from the end of one aisle to the next. Metal clipboards on steel legs stood
bolted to the flats at the end of each row of skids. The counterfeit customs officer stooped to
read the information on one of the boards.
>"These rows are arranged by destination and scheduled date out." He looked up. "All we
need to do is find Delhi.
>Odate bent to read the sheet clipped to the steel backing. A miniature diagram of the
warehouse floor showed the aisle at which they stood and listed that aisle's destinations and
shipping dates. "All right, let's separate and scan all these as quickly as possible."
>Staying in character as best he could, the fake Tri-Seas Security guard strolled the central
aisle of the Ying Chuk warehouse. Secondary tunnels through the towers of merchandise
branched off to the right and left. Ken scanned the tablets as he briskly walked down the wide
concrete path, moving out of the way of the battered orange forklift trucks as they sped by
him.
>"Konnichiwa."
>Ken's heart froze as he heard the Japanese greeting whispered beside his right ear. From his
crouched position in front of a clipboard, he spun around and looked up to see the wiry
angular form of Kozo Matsutani standing next to him. The monk was wearing the maroon
jeans he had worn the night before, along with a maroon polo shirt. The brown weathered face
grinned mischievously.
>Ken was stunned. "How did you get in here?" he stammered in a whisper.
>"I just walked in. They had me out there in the truck with Kanda-san, but I felt I could be of
more use in here. How are you doing?"
>"You just walked in? How did you get past the guards, through the checkpoints?"

>"They did not see me."

>The young ninja cocked his head slightly and lifted one eyebrow. "I do not understand. Even
with all our convincing passes and uniforms, it was almost a loss making it in here. And you
just walked in through three security stations without being seen?"
>"Yes. I created a feeling of not needing to be seen. Therefore, no one bothered to see me."
>A shadow of suspicion loomed up in Odate's mind. What if this man had been permitted to
enter because the enemy wanted him to be here?
>"I will not be able to retain my invisibility much longer if we continue to stand here with you
directing your attention toward me. We need to be over there." The tulku pointed to one of the
offshoot aisles.
>Ken's trained senses were not yet ready to drop the suspicious nature of the man's supposed
ability to move past three checkpoint stations unseen. His mind spun as the two of them
moved behind a stack of huge tractor tires.
>"What did you mean by invisibility?"
>Kozo's face held an expression of childlike innocence and openness. "The quality of being
impossible to see."
>Ken was incredulous now. He had temporarily forgotten the extreme danger they faced, so
taken aback was he with this man's preposterous conversation. "You can become invisible?"
>"Of course." Kozo's hooded eyes narrowed. "You are trained as a Matsutani ryu ninja, and
yet you cannot understand that ability?"
>Odate's thin lips were held in firm flat line. He stared at the man in maroon before him. The
brother of the chairman of the board of Matsutani Shoji Ltd. continued on. "The nine powers
of the kuji, your teachers did not instruct you?"
>The young agent's mind was swimming. Certainly he had heard all the tales, all the myths
and legends. But all that talk about ninjutsu invisibility, future reading, water walking,
clairvoyant sight, and the like was only the stuff of Japanese children's novels. The legends
were creations of fiction, used by the family ancestors to give themselves a needed
psychological edge over their forbidding adversaries hundreds of years ago.
>No, I suppose not," Kozo answered himself He gave a light sigh. "You and the others have
fallen into the trap of technicality thinking. That is a danger, you know. The more you rely on
technology to do the work for you, the farther you get from the essence of the creative power
of your own channeled intentions. Be aware that technology can blind you to perceptions of
broader realities as well."
>The professionally trained killer was speechless before the baffling little man. Was this a
put-on? Below the surface of, his surprise, he wondered where Barbara and Sieji were and
what they would think if they had heard Kozo's story.
>Kozo shoved his hands into the back pockets of his dark red jeans and looked off to the side
as though making a decision. "Perhaps I could be of some value to my brother after all." The
monk warrior turned back to Kenichi Odate. "I would be glad to work with you on it, if these
powers mean anything to you."
>Ken stared right at the man in front of him, as though no comment were a way of urging him
on.
>"The nine powers look like spiritual magic to the uninitiated, but the whole process is really
very mechanical. It is all right there in the Dainichi kyo, the 'sutra of all-encompassing
enlightenment.' I went through the training in Tibet, but you have the same thing in Japan as
transmitted by the monk scholar Kukai. It is not a difficult collection of skills to master, but it
does take discipline. You start with the meditation on seeing through the ten illusive images."
>Kozo stopped short and squinted at the young man in the security guard uniform before him.
He smiled. "Well, whenever you are ready. Let me know when it interests you."
>Ken suddenly recalled the urgency of his mission with a mental jolt.

>"Yes. Yes, we can talk later, but I need to find that shipment right now. Time is running out."
>With a distracted gaze, Kozo looked over the young man's shoulder and then somewhat to
the right. He pointed casually with his finger. "What you are seeking is over there."
>Ken turned and looked in the direction the monk had pointed. He had indicated that direction
earlier. Another towering cliff face built of crated merchandise loomed up just like all the
others. "How do you know it is over there?"
>The tulku grinned and shook his head from side to side. He looked up at the young ninja. "I
just know, Ken-chan. I just know."
>
>Kozo had been right on the money. The block of cargo he had indicated was exactly what
they were searching for. Ken had recalled Barbara and Seiji and now the four stood beneath a
three story wall of wooden packing crates. Ken had chosen not to mention to his fellow agents
the precise means by which Kozo had located the target cylinders so quickly.
>"Those are the crates. Up there on the second-level platform." All four had looked up into
the dark gloom that descended from the unseen industrial beam ceiling that must have been up
there somewhere. It was going to be tough getting photographs under these circumstances.
>"We are running out of time. The way I see it, we have three possibilities. We can get up
there, get a few boards from the side panel off and get some photos. If we cannot get any
shots, we all three get a good mental picture of the cylinders so that we can give an accurate
description later on." Ken remembered Kozo and altered his statement. "Well, all four of us."
>The Hisatsutai agent had not mentioned to the others Kozo's explanation as to how he had
gotten past the guard posts. In response to their astonishment, he had simply replied that Kozo
had bluffed his way past the sentries and that they would discuss it in detail later when they
had time.
>"All we need is a reasonable description so that we can have some dummy canisters made up
for the switch in Delhi," interjected Seiji. "'The odds are highly in our, favor that the workers
who did the painting and recrating work in Seoul will not be around in India to check for
details. We could probably just make up any painting and crating configuration and pull this
off."
>"Maybe. But we still don't know who is behind this. There's no telling how thorough they
intend to be."
>Barbara Nishimura asked, "What's your third possibility?"
>"Well, if we get run out of here now, we could always come back in at night to get a visual
description under less pressured circumstances."
>Barbara sighed. "I don't like that."
>Kozo left the group and scampered effortlessly up the steel I beam scaffolding. The sinewy
tulku with the shaggy close-cropped hair moved up the structure like a squirrel at play. Still
the agile squirrel, the holy man shimmied sideways out along the paneled sides of the crates
on the second level of the storage tower. He then leaned out over the heads of the three agents
standing below him, visually appearing to contradict the very laws of gravity, and called down
softly for the camera that Barbara carried in her shoulderstrap purse.
>Odate was again bewildered by this stranger who had arrived out of nowhere forty years
after he was thought to have died. He did not see how this unusual character in maroon could
really be their chairman's brother back from the dead, a Tibetan holy man, and a one-time
Matsutani ryu ninja, all rolled into one.
>The young man from Kuro Island did not understand all the religious references made by
Kozo to explain his cryptic statement that he could become invisible at will. As it was for the
vast majority of all Japanese, for Ken religion was not a matter of believing or not believing,
of professing or denying. It was simply a case of not having any particular need for an aspect
of life that Westerners called religion. Shinto traditions and Buddhist practices were evident

everywhere in Japan, but did not dominate. the feelings, morals, and politics of the citizenry
as did the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faith systems in the Occidental world. The Shinto
rituals were traditions for weddings, new home sites, and children's special days at ages three,
five, and seven. The Buddhist rituals were for funerals and the reverence of departed
ancestors. That was tradition in Japan. Few Japanese went beyond that tradition to involve
themselves in the fuller depths of the religious disciplines from which public observations
were drawn.
>The spiritual lore of Japan is indeed vast, and rare is the villager who would willingly go
against the traditional customs and celebrations of his region. These feasts, parties, vigils, and
offerings are performed, however, more for the sake of superstitious safety and concern for
the public approval of one's neighbors, rather than as a demonstration of intense religious
conviction. If the spiritual lore of Japan is vast, even more vast is the superstitious lore of
Japan.
>As a tiny fatherless child on Kurojima, Ken had played the games of imagination that
brought him into contact with the frolicking nature spirits, spiteful goblins, and mischievous
ghosts that the exuberance of the youthful mind are likely to conjure up. Like the other young
ones who grew up on the western coast of Kyushu, little Kenichi had heard from winking
elders tales of the ice-cold ghost hands that lurked to reach up and snatch him by the bottom if
he crouched too long over the oblong hole in the privy floor to relieve himself. Like other
children, Kenichi had played the daring game of kimo dameshi, where he was required to run
into the graveyard during the Obon haunting season and snatch up an object and get back out
before he was seized by the ghostly residents More than once the little Japanese boy with the
unknown Scottish father had crept out to the well beside his grandfather's house to make an
offering of piled salt in apology for frivolous carelessness that might have offended the ido no
kami spirit of the well. Such was the extent of Kenichi Suzuki Odate's childhood spiritual
training.
>When his mother had moved him to Kumamoto to join his new father, the first father that he
had ever known, young Kenichi quickly learned to let go of the fairy tales cherished in youth.
Once he commenced his training in the warrior disciplines of the Matsutani ryu of ninjutsu,
Ken had learned at great speed the fact that all in life revolves around the cold hard truths of
physical reality. There were no wood spirits or friendly ghosts to keep him from taking a
beating when his skills were not up to what they should have been in the dojo. No amount of
prayers could alter the fact that his grueling tests were passed only by means of thorough
training and personal resolve.
>Ken and Ken alone had been responsible for surviving murderous attacks of financial
terrorists in the few years that he had been employed as the ultimate solution to problems that
the law stood powerless to rectify. Ken was interested in finding out more about Kozo's skills
of invisibility. That knowledge could prove useful in his line of work. He was not interested,
however, in becoming some sort of monk in order to do it.
>Barbara looked up at the outward-leaning Kozo. She lifted the camera from her purse and
hesitated.
>"Come on," he demanded in a loud whisper, "there is not much time. just throw it."
>Without really thinking about what she was doing, Barbara found herself obeying and
tossing the tiny camera upward. It was as if the camera had been pulled from her hands during
a moment of distraction. Why was this stranger taking over their responsibilities, and why
were they permitting him to do so?
>In a miraculous twist of good fortune, there would be no prying or opening required to get a
good visual identification of the disguised contents. The dark green cylinders destined for
Delhi lay on their sides in open framework crates that held the canisters in packs of six.

Chained valve chocks requiring tubular keys prevented the cylinders from accidentally being
opened.
>Seji scaled the steel latticework to join the maroon-clad figure holding the miniature camera.
The two ninja climbed all around the crates and snapped the entire roll of film in recording all
the details of outward appearance. Their family's agents in Delhi would now have the
guidance they needed to complete the dummy shipment. Barbara and Ken moved to the ends
of the worn concrete aisle to scout for security personnel possibly moving toward them.
>Kozo and Seiji scrambled to the floor and beckoned the other two agents to join them. The
information procurement aspect of the operation had been completed. Now all that remained
was to get out of the warehouse without further incident.
>Ken touched the silver bar across his necktie to activate the miniature microphone that was
wired to transmit to Emi Kitagawa's receiving unit in her hotel room. In a low voice, he spoke
of their success and advised that they were now on their way out. He requested an alert
standby just in case they encountered a problem.
>"How do we do this now?" asked Barbara in a subdued voice.
>"We move right back to the front where we entered, only this time let's move around the
outside walls of the storage area to reduce the number of people who can spot and stop us."
Ken paused a beat and continued, "I will go first, do the signing out, pave the way for you."
>"Do you think that they really believe we are who we said we were, or are they in here
looking for us right now?"
>"I hesitate to take a stand on that one. Let's play it straight. No chances, no laxness."
>Seiji interrupted to mention that he had seen a huge shipping door opened in the east wall,
just in case they needed to make a break for it. There seemed to be no security at that door,
but with this elaborate system, it probably meant that the drive was fenced and manned with
guards.
>"Let's move."
>"Wait a minute!" interjected Seiji. "What about Kozo-san? How do we explain having him
along with us?"
>Ken turned toward the monk and asked half sarcastically, half hopefully, "Can you make
yourself disappear again like you did to get in here?"
>"Yes, of course, but I do not think we will be going out the front like that."
>Ken turned to pursue the man's loaded comment, but was stopped by a movement caught
from the corner of his eye.
>The guard with the Uzi was moving toward their group slowly, the barrel of the automatic
weapon leveled on them from the hip. He was backed up by two additional men dressed in
civilian work attire. One of the men was Chinese and the other appeared to be from southern
Europe or the Middle East.
>"I want those guns on the ground right now," the guard demanded in British-accented
English.
>The Matsutani agents froze, minds racing. Ken took over. "Please! No trouble, not with
customs. They're the government!"
>"I said guns on the ground right now! If I hear one more word out of any of you before I see
those weapons on the ground I'll blow that person's legs out from under him. Now move!"
>The three men at the end of the aisle were far too distant for the Japanese to attack, even
though only one held a weapon that could be seen. There was an aisle stretching out to their
left, but there was no telling where it led. Escape without a fight seemed but a dimly remote
possibility.
>Perhaps their cover was not really blown after all. Perhaps the management really did have
some secret to conceal, something very important about which the Hisatsutai planning session
could not have known. Unarmed, Odate decided to gamble on carrying out the illusion that he

was with Tri-Seas and that he was a misunderstood minion doing his part for the Ying Chuk
warehouse concern. He turned and asked the fraudulent customs agents to lay down their
pistols.
>Barbara contemplated firing at the armed guard at the end of the aisle as she withdrew her
weapon from its holster. A highly trained killer, she possessed sufficient skill to hit him from
where she stood. The question was whether he would be fast enough on the trigger to cut her
down before she got him.
>Before she could make her move, the guard with the Uzi finalized her decision for her.
"Reach across with your left hand and pull the pistol out with your thumb and little finger.
Everything very slowly."
>The air reverberated with the pulse of the tension between the two groups of adversaries. If
the Hisatsutati blew it now, all would be lost. The opposition would know their scheme had
been detected and would slip underground once again, still unknown and undetectable, only to
emerge at a later date at their own convenience. All Matsutani Shoji assets the world over
could be transformed into waiting hostages, sitting in the center of the crosshairs of an
anonymous enemy.
>The two customs agents placed their guns on the floor and lifted their hands as the three
figures at the end of the aisle crept toward them. "All right. That is what we needed. Now turn
around and walk slowly. You have some questions to answer.
>Ken, Seiji, and Barbara glanced at each other nervously. The Matsutani ryu ninja turned
slowly, arms held high. At the same moment, all three realized that their fourth member had
disappeared.
>Kozo Matsutani was nowhere in sight.
>
>
>Chapter 15
>
>Emi Kitagawa adjusted the squelch and volume for the fifth time and moved her microphone
half an inch closer to the edge of the desk. She picked up the highpowered Brunton binoculars
and scanned the afternoon scene below once again. There was still no trace of movement.
> Emi's bedroom in the Wellington Hotel suite looked out the back of the towering hotel,
straight down to the vicinity where their scouting operation was taking place. She was
monitoring the radio communications from the two remote lookouts and from the agents
inside the Ying Chuk warehouse, and could transmit to a fourth station where the remainder of
the Hisatsutai force waited in Hong Kong police uniforms just in case physical backup was
required.
> The Matsutani electrical engineer had dragged the desk in her room over to the window.
There she would have a flat surface on which to stack her portable transceivers, which she had
carried into the Wellington disguised as leather attach cases. From her position at the
window, she could look directly down on the back of the stakeout truck, though she was
unable to see the warehouse itself.
> It had turned out to be a hot afternoon, and the overhead sun bounced off the concrete of
Hong Kong with shimmering displays of heatwave hallucinations. Through her binoculars
Emi could see the illusions of invisible rivers, phantom pedestrians, and shimmying
automobiles that vanished and reappeared as they moved silently up and down the streets.
Though her hotel room was air conditioned, Emi's position beside the curtainless window put
her in the direct glare of the fiery orb above and made her task a stiflingly hot ordeal. She had
already stripped down to a pair of pastel green bikini underpants and a sleeveless white cotton
pullover in deference to the warmth. Her long black hair was twisted up and held in place
behind her head with an elastic band. She was ready for a long hot afternoon.

>Emi glanced over at the clock. Seventeen minutes had gone by since their people had
entered the warehouse. She held her lower lip between her teeth and hoped with all her heart
that everything was going well. Emi brushed the perspiration beads from her forehead with
the back of her hand and reached for her glass of iced tea. She noticed that the last vestiges of
ice chips had long since melted into body of the pale golden beverage.
>Emi heard the key rattle in the lock of the distant hallway door to the suite's living room.
Though she had just looked at the clock, she looked again, and thought that her uncle must
have come back to the suite much sooner than she had expected. He was probably bored. Poor
Uncle Toru, she smiled to herself. He so missed the old days when the action called for his
personal capabilities and fighting expertise. His heart was just not into being someone else's
advisor or trainer.
>The door opened and closed and Emi called out in welcome to her returning uncle. She
heard the television set come on in the living room, and turned back to her silent transceivers.
Emi pinched the damp fabric of her cotton beach jersey and fanned the front panel of the thin
garment in and out rapidly to move some air across her perspiring chest and abdomen. She
lifted the binoculars. No, nothing going on yet. The stakeout van still remained parked in
place twenty-one minutes after their agents had entered the warehouse disguised as customs
officers.
>Without consciously knowing why, Emi suddenly felt compelled to turn and look over her
right shoulder toward the door to her room. There in black trousers and a white mandarin
jacket stood a hotel bellboy holding a silver ice bucket containing what appeared to be a bottle
of champagne. The silent Chinese stood there motionlessly, staring at her from behind brownlensed aviator sunglasses.
>The key in the lock with no knock, the television set coming on with the volume turned up,
and the unordered champagne in the middle of the afternoon all came together to tell Emi that
despite the authentic uniform, this was no bellboy that stood in her door.
>Her heart in her throat, the female agent slowly rose to her feet and inched to her left behind
the queen-sized bed. She kept the window wall to her back and held her eyes riveted on the
man in the white high-collared jacket. He was grinning now, his parted lips pulled back to
expose a row of large yellowed teeth.
>"Now what did I do to earn this?" chuckled Sonny Chen aloud.
>When he realized that the girl was going for the bedside telephone or perhaps even a pistol
in the drawer, Chen took the wine bottle into his right hand and hurled the silver ice bucket at
the bedstand with his left. The white ginger jar lamp on the low table exploded in a storm of
flying ice, porcelain, and glass, forcing Emi to recoil protectively with her arms in front of her
face.
>Sonny Chen held himself poised on the balls of his feet in anticipation of his target's next
move. She would either make a break around the foot of the bed, or try to run right over the in
fear, the mattress. With racing pulse, he watched her chest heave sweat soaked shirt clinging
like a second skin to delineate the protruding nipples of her breasts. He liked that.
>The Chinese street punk was running out of time. What if the girl started screaming and
pounding on the walls to bring assistance from a neighboring room? He had to get her to
make a move to escape, and then she was his.
>Gripping the long green neck of the champagne bottle upended in his right hand like a tennis
racket, Chen flinched to his right as though to hit the girl. just as he expected, she flew around
the foot of the bed right into the waiting crook of his left arm. He tightened the arm toward
himself and pulled his struggling victim against the front of his torso. To Chen's delight, her
squirming buttocks in the tiny underpants pressed back against his groin as she scrambled for
a hold on his choking left arm.

>From his position behind the girl, Sonny Chen swung his right fist around and in with two
swatting punches to her lower ribs. When she caved forward with a cry, he folded forward
with her, bringing his right hand up to twist and tear the light cotton fabric of her beach shirt.
He then slid his sweating palm back and forth across her exposed breasts.
>Emi could feel the man's hot wet breath whistling in her left ear as he struggled to fold her
forward. She felt his thumb shove down inside the elastic waistband of her panties. He was
alternately cursing and giggling now as he struggled to pull them down. His thumbnail
scraped insistently down the crease between her buttocks, but the pressure of his hips against
hers prevented the panties from slipping off.
>Like all agents of the Matsutani ryu "Eye of the Hawk" clandestine forces, Emi had received
the required number of hours of training in their ninjutsu tradition's taijutsu fighting method.
Emi had done well in her training. Her fighting skills as tested in the dojo had qualified her
for the sixth of nine sub-ratings that lead to the first advanced rank in the family's combat
training curriculum. Nonetheless, she was not a killer like Barbara Nishimura.
>Her instructors had always warned her that if she were ever in a situation where she needed
to defend herself in combat, she would not remember any of the specifics taught in their
training hall lessons. She would at best allow her body to respond with appropriate dynamics
and natural weapon applications based on what her body, not her mind, had internalized from
the classroom techniques that were used.
>Emi's shock and fear had steadily turned to rage. Where were those fighting skills her
teachers spoke of now that she really needed them? In the training hall of her sensei
Kumamoto she had never had the breath crushed out of her. She had never in the dojo had a
drooling wheezing training partner half chew her ear off. In all her hours of practice, she had
never had a grunting panting animal shove his thumb tip halfway into her anus. This
degrading and horrible experience was totally new to her, and she was furious that she should
have to endure it.
>Without consciously forming her tactics, Emi found herself stabbing backward over her left
shoulder with great upward looping swings of her outstretched stiffened fingers. The elegant
sculpted nails with their glistening Autumn Plum coating cracked and broke as Emi's left hand
repeatedly dug tiny hunks of skin from the forehead of Sonny Chen.
>With an enraged bark, the Chinese street tough lifted his head up, back, and away from
Emi's left ear to avoid the slashing nails. As he shifted the angle of his face, Chen accidentally
aligned his right eye with the rearward stabbing attacks of Emi's left hand.
>The middle finger of the woman's left hand hit the right side of the bridge of her assailant's
nose and skittered and scraped its way down past the tear duct and on in to wedge itself in the
tight space between the right eyeball and the socket that housed the fleshy sphere. Chen
hissed in pain and released his captive to grope for his face with both hands.
>Emi pulled her finger out of Chen's eye socket and spun around to drive the chisel-like
knuckles of her flattened right fist into the exposed windpipe of her tormentor. There was a
wet clicking noise from beneath her fist. She continued on with multiple bursts of elbow
slams to Chen's ribs and knee strikes to the bones beneath the muscles of his thighs.
>Stunned and hurt, the would-be rapist fought back with downward clubbing fists that crested
like skyrockets to descend on the black hair of Emi's bowed head. He had his victim
staggering now, and reached up from behind her to grab a handful of hair and jerk her head
back. As her long neck arched in pain to follow her head, her shoulders pulled back and lifted
to expand and push forward her chest. The cotton jersey had long since torn completely loose
and Chen reveled in the sight of the twin mounds of her uplifted breasts.
>This was a fantasy come true, gushed Chen to himself. For all the whores in his young life,
he had never had a woman fight him like this. The situation was erotic beyond his wildest
dreams. He felt himself stiffen. As the breath rasped in and out of his lungs, Chen knew that

he would enjoy like never before penetrating this wild dragon of a woman and slamming
away until he had thoroughly satiated himself in the hot tight fury of the hidden grip she
worked so savagely to keep from him.
>With the front and then the back of his open hand, Chen smacked the girl across the face so
hard that she slumped backward against the left forearm that held her by the hair. The Chinese
attacker spun, pressing the limp form to him, and crashed sideways onto the bed in a deadfall
on top of her.
>Still struggling for life, the breath knocked out of her and now barely clinging to
consciousness, Emi wedged her right knee up and in against the side of Chen's chest. She used
all her strength to shift out from beneath him, but to no avail. He shoved her leg away to
where it now awkwardly angled out to the side with the bottom of her thigh pressed against
his chest.
>Emi could barely breathe. In horror, she realized that she could feel the full length of her
attacker's erection through the fabric of his trousers as he ground his pelvis in undulations
against the strained patch of pastel cotton fabric that still stretched over her pubic mound.
>Emi was sobbing with rage. She tore at her assailant's face with hands that had become
claws, her fingers snagging nostrils, eyelids, and lips at random. Chen shook his head from
side to side violently to free himself from the hands. Emi reached right back in with her right
and sent the broken nail of her thumb ripping through the tender dental tissue along the entire
stretch of his upper left gum. Chen screamed and jerked his head back, strings of bloody
spittle lacing out in all directions. Emi bucked upward with her torso and tightened the
muscles of her folded thigh to flip the Chinese attacker off her.
>Emi scrambled to her feet. Chen leaped off the bed roaring in Chinese. Emi caught him with
one, then two, and then three savage kicks to the stomach, the bare toes of her left foot
pressed together to create a single kicking tool that folded her assailant and dropped him to
his knees. She grabbed up the abandoned champagne bottle and lifted it high over her
shoulder to bring it sailing down with a death blow to the back of Chen's head.
>The Bulgarian assassin Sergei Orosov nimbly stepped through the door and grabbed up the
toppled desk chair. In a series of movements so fluid that the entire sequence of actions took
no more than three seconds, he raised it in the air and brought it crashing down across the side
and back of Emi Kitagawa's head. The female agent had been knocked out immediately and
had been slammed forward facedown on the gray carpet.
>"You were making too much noise," the Bulgarian threw at Chen in clipped English words
as he lowered the chair to the floor.
>The bloody street tough made no reply. With growling exhalations, he scrambled over to the
collapsed girl. In a matter of moments he had thrown her onto the bed and pulled the green
panties down past her knees. He struggled to fold open her bruised thighs so that he could
wedge his own hips in between them at their juncture.
>"What are you doing now?" asked the would-be Pope murderer. His voice was filled with
contempt.
>With labored breathing, the Chinese street punk worked at the zippered fly that stood
between him and satisfaction. "What's it look like? I'm going to fuck this piece."
>"We are not paying you to fuck people."
>Sonny Chen was beyond hearing. The black pants finally at his ankles, he crawled between
the unconscious woman's raised knees and lowered himself heavily. "I earned this and I'm
going to take it." Chen's left hand snaked between his grinding legs for assistance with proper
alignment and then he found his opening and pushed home with vigor.
>Orosov squeezed the trigger twice and there were two bursts of air pressure from the muzzle
of the flat-gray tube threaded onto the end of the Czechoslovakian Vzor 50 7.65mm pistol.
The sound of the suppressed rounds of subsonic ammunition resembled that of two beer

bottles being uncapped on a warm summer's day in seaside Varna, reflected the stone-faced
Bulgarian.
>The first slug blew out Chen's right eye and the second entered his skull a few centimeters
above the right eyebrow. The body of the Chinese henchman twitched and lifted, then tumbled
onto the floor. He lay in death sprawled beneath the dangling bare feet of the naked girl he
had worked so inefficiently to subdue.
>The Bulgarian peered over the unconscious body of the woman on the bed to check the
corpse on the floor. "And that is one more little debt that our Mr. Lao owes to us."
>Sergei Orosov looked at his watch and moved to the chest of drawers to find some clothes
for the girl. He sighed heavily. Thanks to the unreliable Chen, it was up to Orosov alone to
take her to Kwon the assassin.
>
>Chapter 16
>
>The hard steel tip of the Uzi muzzle pressed against the ridge of vertebrae that made up
Ken's backbone. A short brutal shove dug through the white fabric into the skin that covered
the bone and painfully propelled the Matsutani ryu ninja forward.
>Hands clasped on top of his head, Ken stared straight forward. Ahead of him moved the
forms of Barbara Nishimura and Seiji Iwate, also shuffling along slowly with hands clasped
together atop their heads. Like Ken their minds raced to form plans to gain their escape
without totally compromising the project. If these saboteurs, whoever they were, went further
underground after learning that the Matsutanis knew of their plans, there would be no telling
what form their attack on the Himalayan energy facility would take.
>"You do know that the Hong Kong police will be giving a lot of scrutiny to the
disappearance of two customs agents. The office is sure to contact the Hong Kong police as
soon as it becomes apparent that the agents have turned up missing from duty."
>Ken continued to refer to the Hong Kong police in a loud and demanding voice. The micro
transmitter built into his tie bar would send his words to Emi Kitagawa, and she in turn would
alert the Hisatsutai backup agents. They were set to respond with a small invasion of what
would appear to be Hong Kong police officers.
>"I told you to drop the conversation," clipped the Tri-Seas guard with the stout
submachinegun at the ninja's back. "We already know those two did not come from customs.
Shut up and keep walking."
>Another painful shove emphasized the guard's words, and Ken struggled internally with a
decision over what action to take. It had already been discussed among the captors that the
prisoners would be taken from the premises for what the dark-faced one described as "proper
disposal." Odate had overheard that. Somehow their cover had been blown away. It was as
though these warehouse people had been waiting for their entry. The Japanese agent's mind
clicked on over the facts and clues. If the opposition had been expecting their arrival, how
much else did they know?
>"Your belief is immaterial. The Hong Kong police. . . " Ken was cut off in midsentence by a
hand that reached ahead of the gun muzzle to grasp him by the back of the collar and pull
back violently.
>"I said shut up! I mean it. I can just as easily blow your spine apart right here."
>The ninja had used the words Hong Kong police twelve times in the past five minutes. He
had expected to hear the rise-and-drop scream of sirens by now. Emi was to have alerted the
reinforcements immediately. Something must have gone wrong. Either his transmitter had
malfunctioned or the backup troops had been snagged. There also was the remote possibility
that Emi had encountered a problem of some sort.

>Odate's ninja-trained mind tumbled over with sensory impressions. He heard the rhythmic
slap and shuffle of shoe leather on the concrete floor below. He could feel the cold sweat
prickle out on his upper lip and across the back of his shoulders. He could see daylight ahead
cutting laterally through the gloom of the stacked merchandise tiers. That must be the
shipping door that Seiji mentioned earlier, he thought.
>Ken staggered along with large nervous movements that did not at all appear out of character
for a man who knew he was marching to his execution. The agent knew he could use such
mannerisms as a means of concealing a good look at what lay outside the shipping doors as
the small party passed by the breach in the warehouse wall. He had already made up his mind
that quick, direct, and desperate action on his part was the only possibility of getting away
alive. He was convinced with grim finality that for whatever reason, there were no backup
troops moving in to rescue him.
>They were approaching the shipping doors that led out to what was in all probability a wellsecured parking and loading area outside the Ying Chuk warehouse. If there were enough
vehicles out there, and enough workers moving about the area, there might be a slim chance
of temporarily overcoming their armed guards and scrambling out to safety. When Ken made
his move, the two agents in customs uniforms would doubtlessly spin with him. As per their
training for this type of situation, Barbara and Seiji would be moving along in the extreme
alertness that would permit them to follow Ken's lead, changing mode and course literally
between breaths.
>The ninja silently took a deep breath, steeled his resolve, and purposely faltered in his step.
His captor, now used to the prisoner's nervous ambling movements, responded as previously
done by shoving forward with the barrel of the Uzi. This time, however, the Japanese prisoner
sank on his right knee and arched his back in response to the pressure against his spine. From
his extensive training in the ninja's weapon disarm tactics, he knew that a smooth backwarddrifting action was the key to escape. In comparison, he knew that the simple quick spin
around so often taught to police personnel the world over was a sure way to die at the hands
of an armed assailant.
>The edge of the gun muzzle slid forward along the muscle ridges beside his backbone as
Ken continued to sink on his right leg and spin backward. In less time than the winking of an
eye, he was beside the gunman and completely below the man's line of sight. The right hand
of the Hisatsutai professional shot forward to seize the trigger guard of the Uzi. A crushing
squeeze against the first knuckle bent the tip of the guard's shooting finger back into the metal
curve of the trigger guard. With a shearing twist, Ken broke the gunman's finger before he
could fire the first shot.
>Barbara and Seiji responded almost as one before the two startled thugs behind Ken's guard
realized they faced an escape attempt. At the instant they perceived the clash, the man and
woman in the customs disguises dropped low on crouched legs and peeled around away from
each other to emerge on either side of the machinegunner. Barbara faced the evil-looking
European, Seiji faced the large Chinese.
>Ken dispatched his thrashing target with two left-arm elbow slams to the man's right temple,
and then worked at pulling the Uzi away from the slumping body as Seiji tore into the thug
behind him. The beefy Chinese street fighter resisted the lighter Iwate's first punches and
worked at grappling for a hold on the Japanese. As the struggle progressed, the gangster was
staggered by a pair of brutally direct sokuyaku heel stamp kicks to the front of his left knee.
With a thick wet cracking sound, the joint folded back against itself and the burly Chinese
tumbled to the concrete, crippled for life.
>Barbara grabbed the right arm of her target as he reached into the side pocket of his olivegreen field jacket. The lean dark-faced European skittered to the side, dragging the woman
along with him as he worked to pull his hand out of his pocket. Barbara stamped down at his

ankle with the bottom of her left foot. Clinging to his right forearm, she kept low and off to
his right side as a way of avoiding a possible flailing punch from his unhindered left hand.
>With a twist and a small leap, Cresc the Albanian pulled his right arm from the pocket of his
coat. The hooked folding knife in his hand snapped into its locked-open position and flashed
out and up to tear across the abdomen of his assailant. The razor edge of the blade left a deep
gaping rift behind it as the point bit into the brown cloth of Barbara's skirt and sliced all the
way up to the tan cotton fabric covering her ribs.
>Workers in dark-green utility uniforms were running to the shipping door from all points of
the warehouse now. None of them carried guns, but many held hammers, truncheons, or
chains.
>Seiji quickly tore off his coat, giving him access to a black silk pouch sashed to his waist. A
shot rang out from close range. The crippled Chinese guard, not completely overcome by
pain, had managed to pull a small caliber pistol from its holster and fired blindly between
Seiji and Ken. Before Ken could bring the Uzi to bear on the guard, another report barked and
the bullet spranged off the Uzi's firing chamber, rendering it useless. In the same instant Seiji
removed three senban shuriken from his pouch and flung one at the gun-wielding arm. But the
gun spit one more burst before the four-pointed star cut into the wrist tendons and caused the
Chinese to drop the gun. Seiji jerked toward Ken, blood staining his right side just below his
arm, as he hurled yet another star at the faltering assailant. The slim flat blade tore into the
guard's exposed throat.
>Ken caught his ninja brother, and together they staggered into a narrow aisle to their left off
the main boulevard where Barbara struggled with Cresc the Albanian.
>The deadly knife moved like a hummingbird. Here, there, now rising in surprise from below.
Barbara backed away from the Albanian with low and level sliding steps, the foam waist
padding that had saved her from injury blossoming out from the rips in her uniform. She
suddenly lifted her left leg, flexing her knee, and reached up under the edge of her skirt to pull
the flat bo shuriken throwing spikes from the black nylon sheath strapped to the inside of her
thigh.
>The woman's right arm lifted and lowered sharply three times. Cresc the Albanian fanned his
left arm and staggered backward. Two of the three steel spikes were lodged point first in the
killer, one protruding from beside his right nostril, the other in his right eye. The third blade
skittered off a crate onto the floor.
>Barbara was on him in an instant. Her right shin swung with powerful slams to the terrorist's
groin as her hands worked to control and redirect his knife-wielding right arm. The enraged
Albanian spun away from her as two truncheon-wielding workers closed in from behind the
female ninja.
>Torn between aiding Seiji or Barbara, Ken glanced down the corridor Seiji had chosen to
enter. It was safe for now. Quickly the Matsutani ryu ninja jumped away from his fallen friend
and intercepted the two Chinese, using the broken Uzi as a club. The front sight of the barrel
shattered the first man's hand, forcing him to drop his truncheon, and short straight punches
with the tip of the muzzle broke up facial bones of the second. Ken then flipped the gun
around and swung the butt of the Uzi across the back of the first man's head. He tossed aside
the damaged gun and turned to look toward the loading dock where he had hoped they could
make their escape.
>With a loud whining whir, the opening in the far wall began to shrink as a huge steel door
descended slowly toward the concrete lip below it. A tall man clad in a dark green warehouse
uniform stood at the electrical box next to the vertical roller track, his hand on the spring lever
that engaged the drive mechanism, which steadily cut off their route of retreat. A loud klaxon
horn began a rhythmic oogah oogah oohah warning throughout the cavernous structure.

>"Let's get out of here. Now!" Ken cried out to Barbara as the woman crouched and moved
around the corner of an aisle to her right. Eyes scanning the expanse ahead of her for signs of
the fleeing Albanian, she moved like a shark cutting through home waters after her wounded
prey.
>Across the corridor, Seiji rose to his feet and pulled a small brass tube from the pouch at his
waist. The wounded ninja jerked the ring from the end of the device, forcing together the
chemicals contained inside, and tossed the smoke bomb left-handed toward a group of six
green-clad men rushing in on Ken from the direction of the closing loading dock door.
>As she moved into the narrow aisle, Barbara dropped and rolled under the deadly downward
arc of Cresc's knife. Blood matted the killer's hair and streamed down the right side of his face
where the assassin had pulled the shuriken from his flesh and bone. He then flipped the knife
into a backhanded grip and brought it slashing over the back of Barbara's tattered blouse.
>The Albanian then stabbed down at the crouching woman with an inward swinging right
hook with the knife. Barbara further flexed her knees to sink out of the path of the cut and
then leaped up again to shove on the outside of the moving right arm, which had just cleared
the top of her head. Assisting the blade in the direction it was traveling, she had aggressively
thrown her body weight against the man's arm. Her synchronized movements caused Cresc to
pull the knife in much more forcefully than he had intended as he spun toward his enemy-and
toward the knife. He lurched forward and shuddered as the killing point of his own knife
plunged into his body just below his ribs. Barbara then followed with a vicious volley of knee
slams to the hilt of the Albanian's knife, driving the weapon like a spike further into the blood
rich organs of his midsection.
>As the killer crumpled to the floor, the shimma kunoichi heard the hiss of the smoke bomb
going off. Ken appeared at the mouth of the aisle and, in angry Japanese, told her to hurry and
follow. As he turned away, wisps of gray-green smoke curled into view. Realizing her attack
on the Albanian had been a foolhardy interruption of their escape, Barbara started after Ken.
She had taken two steps when a hand clutched her right ankle in a viselike grip and pulled her
off balance to the concrete floor.
>Cresc was cursing her in his native tongue, but the blood which surged upward to flood his
mouth and throat caused the sounds to gurgle harshly. He held her with his right hand and
rolled over so he could reach the knife jutting from his side with his left hand. His twisting
grip kept her flailing left leg from kicking at him. He knew he was dying but he wanted to
leave the Japanese witch a reminder of their struggle. Slowly, painfully, he pulled on the
knife, and finally ripped it from his abdomen.
>Ken had thought Barbara was just behind him and stopped as he heard shouting and
coughing within the smoke ahead of him. He quickly removed his Tri-Seas coat and pulled
several shuriken from a pouch similar to Seiji's. He scattered them into the green cloud at
shoulder level and motioned to Seiji to move down his aisle, which had remained clear of
personnel. He turned back when he heard Barbara's scream.
>The shimma kunoichi found one of her bo shuriken lying near where she had fallen, and
quickly retrieved it. When she sat up to throw it at her assailant, she saw in horror the gore
encrusted knife directed at the ligaments of her captured foot. With a scream of rage and all
her might and skill, she threw the small flat blade at the throat of her assailant. The Albanian's
scream was a vomit of blood; with a convulsion he released Barbara's foot and she launched
herself into Ken's arms.
>With professional determination, Barbara quickly composed herself and they both took off
across the main boulevard to catch up with Seiji. The loading dock door was more than
halfway closed, its motion slow but inexorable, as the three ninja agents rounded the end of
the aisle and moved toward the blond giant at the door controls.

>Smiling, the green-clad man raised an Uzi in their direction. Before he could squeeze off the
first shot, however, the door stopped in its tracks and the lanky European lifted off the floor
and flew backward through the air. In his place crouched the maroonclad form of Kozo
Matsutani.
>The three Hisatsutai operatives continued to run toward the open door and the sunlight
beckoning beyond. They saw the tulku framed in the brilliant rectangle of light that poured in
through the half-opened door. He spun and shifted and crouched and side stepped as a gang of
two, then three, then four green-uniformed workers moved at him. A club would descend,
seemingly smashing right through the monk's shoulder, only to continue on in its swing
unslowed by any target. Kicks drove in and looped around, appearing to land with deadly
force right on target, only to wag in the air impotently as Kozo drifted right along with them
in the direction of their power.
>He fought as would an illusory phantom, now flickering into view, now seeming to vanish.
The monk warrior of the Matsutani ryu moved with such subtle alterations of his positioning
that he created the impression of being a vulnerable target one split second and just
millimeters out of range the next. His actions flowed from one to another as he moved with
his assailants, in harmony with the energy generated by their frustrated intentions. At no time
could he be seen to apply what conventionally trained martial artists would have called power
techniques, and there was no blinding darting speed to his movements. There was only the
perfection of relative interval in terms of time and space. The hapless attackers somehow flew
back and away from the tulku one at a time, like scarecrows in a hurricane, to drop
unconscious to the concrete.
>"Hayaku! Hayaku! " bellowed Kozo Matsutani at the trio of agents, urging them to hurry
even faster. The wiry tulku was fanning the air in broad shoveling sweeps toward the loading
dock.
>As Ken passed in front of the shipping door opening, he glanced quickly to see a five-foot
drop at the edge of the loading platform. Backed up to the platform was the open rear door of
a tall-sided Mercedes panel truck. He became aware of the diesel fumes from the idling
engine, and conscious of the arrangement of the few smaller trucks, vans, and automobiles
that shared the lot beyond. As he had surmised, there was a tall chain-link fence at the edge of
the graveled loading expanse. Rust-hued strands of curled barbed wire twisted forbiddingly
along the top of the tall perimeter fence.
>As the three figures leaped through the air toward the gaping mouth of the back of the truck,
Kozo ripped the pressure handle from the side of the electrical box that controlled the descent
of the rolling door. The hinged steel panels overhead screeched and lurched into motion.
Shots had begun to ring out, splitting the air.
> Ken was at the wheel and had already engaged the clutch as Kozo touched down on the
plywood flooring of the truck bed. The tough little monk landed on his feet, then tucked into a
tight ball to roll forward once to accommodate the shock of his fall. The huge door in the Ying
Chuk warehouse wall had completely sealed off the shipping bay behind them.
> The lumbering dust-gray Mercedes diesel spun to the left, picking up speed and aiming for
the chained and locked gate that closed off the fenced-in loading area. Totally without
warning, a green-clad figure appeared in front of the rolling truck, clutching an Uzi to his hip.
A burst of blue-white flame exploded from the tip of the gun's muzzle and the windshield in
front of Ken's face disintegrated in a cascade of flying glass particles.
> Hunched behind the steel panel of the truck's dashboard, chest pressed against the spokes of
the steering wheel, the young ninja furiously crushed the accelerator into the floor with his
foot. The large vehicle shot forward, slamming into the machinegunner and pinning him
against the front of the roaring Mercedes. The truck then hit the frame of the gate, bursting the

restraining bolts, flipping the gate out into the street, and crushing the spine and ribs of the
guard flattened across the front of the truck in the process.
> Ken pulled hard on the wheel and the gray delivery vehicle careened to the right with tires
smoking and slipping, and roared off down Tang Lung Street. The noise from the straining
engine and the wind tearing through the cab prevented any of the four from speaking or even
shouting. As the stolen truck barreled down Wong Nai Chung Road toward safety, however,
all four minds confronted the same grim prospect of what to do next.
> They all knew that their anonymity, and perhaps even the successful derailing of the
unknown terrorists' plot to ruin their family corporation itself, had been compromised beyond
repair. They had yet to learn the full extent of their failure.
>
>Chapter 17
>
> Emi Kitagawa looked out across the flat low-lying campus lawn that stretched from the
Georgia Tech student union, all the way out to the 1-75 freeway right-of-way. The heat was
intense, as it can be on hot summer afternoons in Atlanta. Today was like walking into an
oven.
>There were people around her talking, laughing, moving. She could not discern who they
were exactly. It was so maddeningly unclear. Focus came and went. There was a tall
featureless red brick wall that provided some shade now, but still there was the heat. The
people talking should have been known to her. They were fellow students. That is who they
were. She was sure now.
>They had gone to the huge two story drive-in across the freeway from the campus and Emi
had experienced her first hot dog. An American tradition, they told her. And this particular
kind of hot dog was a Georgia Tech tradition. She was enrolled for three years to complete the
qualifications for an engineering degree. They had smeared it with mustard for her and she
had recoiled in alarm at the amount of the bright yellow condiment that coated the strange
looking little tube of meat. No, they had laughed, this is not like mustard in Japan, it is quite
mild. She remembered greasy onion rings. They had been delicious.
>The heat was incredible. Emi felt the perspiration run down her temples to her neck and
form little rivulets that trickled down between her breasts and welled up in her navel to
tumble on down and bead through her pubic hair. Her shoulders ached. She was drawn to the
pain and curious as to where it had come from. Her arms ached. It was hard to breathe.
> Emi could hear voices again but could not see the faces of her fellow engineering students
anymore. She was there to study electrical engineering. Electrical engineering. The voice
again. There was only one voice. She had been mistaken. She had thought there were several,
but now she was certain that there really was only one voice. There was that voice again and
her body shook from side to side and she screamed out electrical engineering again. She was
there to study the application of the principles of electricity.
>He did not believe her. That was it. That must be it. He did not believe her and that is why
the voice kept probing again and again. She wanted him to believe her, the one behind the
voice. If he would not believe her, that meant she would hurt again when he caused that awful
pain to her vagina. Her arms ached and she couldn't breathe and there it was again, that
splitting ripping burning thing that grew up like a tree inside her, invading her lower body and
compacting all her abdominal organs upward. Emi watched the scream take birth in her
bowels and bubble up through her body to burst forth through her lips. She could feel the
scream as an independent thing, as though the wave of noise and nausea were not part of
herself.
>

> Il Nam Kwon withdrew from the woman's body, his engorged and stiffened organ still a
rigid horn protruding out and up from his broad pelvis. Kwon had no desire for the release of
climax. He sought only to use every means at his disposal to extract the needed information
from his captive. With this one, brought to him in fear and loathing of what he could do to her,
his sexual organ had seemed to be the most terrifying persuader he could use. What she had
suggested in her deepest fear was exactly what he gave her.
> She had blacked out again without telling him any more. He already knew that she was an
electrical engineer. He knew where she had gone to school. That came nowhere near
approaching what he needed to know. The naked assassin walked across the wooden floor of
the little utility room, his erection slowly subsiding. He picked up a towel that had been
draped over the back of a chair and wiped the perspiration from his torso. This was taking far
too long.
>Already she had withstood simple physical abuse. Kwon and Orosov had bound her hands
over her head and used a length of rope to hang her by her arms from the center rafter of the
wooden walled room to which they had carried her gagged and blindfolded. She was a lot
tougher than her size suggested. They got nothing from her through threats, so they resorted to
physical abuse. The naked and bruised female had pitched and wheeled about, taking the
blows like a hanging punching bag, but gave them little more than curses. With a sigh, Kwon
had then sent the Bulgarian out of the room.
> Kwon had begun slowly pulling his clothes off, hoping she would get the message of what
was in store for her if she did not talk. She had started to sob and then cry as the huge naked
bear of a man walked up to her fondling himself. He was so huge and his eyes were so cold.
> She was an electrical engineer who sometimes operated in a clandestine manner. She was
not a spy or secret agent. She had not been trained or prepared for this. She was a glorified
radio operator. Her mind raced against itself. How far was she expected to resist? If she had
been groomed as a Musasabishu operative or even Hisatsutai agent, what would the
instructors have told her about times like this? Was physical degradation or even death the
expected sacrifice for the maintenance of their family's dark and secret legacy, or would they
have told her to make it easy on herself. Tell the man whatever he wants to know and we will
take him out later. How much was she expected to suffer? How far was she expected to go in
this horrifying game in which she now realized there were no second-place awards?
>Through tear-blurred eyes she had watched the approach of the demonic monstrosity whom
she knew was intent on ravaging her hidden treasure. Still she had not talked about who it was
she had been monitoring on those radios and who it was she worked for. Even when he had
grasped her helpless hanging form in his massive arms and used the tip of his erection to
probe with rough stabs the soft fleshy folds at the top of her thighs, she had told him nothing.
Wailing desperately as he went on to shove fully into her, then slam and thrust brutally inside
her, seeming to make time grind to an agonizing standstill, she had told him nothing. He had
continued to penetrate her and withdraw for twelve repetitions of the cycle, maintaining his
erection throughout her ordeal without succumbing to climax, before moving on to the drug
injections.
>He had pierced her skin with the dirty hypodermic and released enough of the clear liquid to
take her into delirious rambling. She talked on of useless things, occasionally moving close to
full consciousness and then drifting off again. The scopalamine and sodium pentathol mixture
had caused her to perspire heavily, weakening her and thickening her tongue. Even in
semiconsciousness she had winced at his approach, so Kwon had continued with sexual abuse
in addition to the drugs, using everything at hand to force an admission from the stubborn
woman.
>Il Nam Kwon derived no particular pleasure or erotic stimulation from torturing the
Japanese radio operator. He would have much preferred it if she had told him straight away

who she was and who it was that knew about the poison gas cylinders bound for Ladakh.
Then he could have killed her quickly and painlessly, and gone about the next phase of his
grim business. As it was, this was dragging out far too long. His annoyance was heightened by
the fact that he had yet to hear from Cresc at the Ying Chuk warehouse where they waited for
some kind of infiltration operation.
>
>As a teenager living just outside the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, Kwon had begun
the training that would eventually lead him to his professional status. After killing the boy in
the Hungnam commune food locker, Kwon had been assigned to a military base far across the
country on the western coast of Korea. In the beginning, he had thought his reassignment to
be a punishment detail. After spending his first day in his new surroundings, however, the
young Kwon had learned that his situation was quite the opposite.
>He had resisted at first what had appeared to be elitist treatment. He had been indoctrinated
well and thoroughly during his years with the Red Youth Guard in Hungnam. The wardrobe of
tailored uniforms and leisure clothing, the spacious private room at the academy, the special
diet-all had run contrary to the young man's inner convictions regarding the equality of all
working comrades.
>The boy's teachers had eventually persuaded him to accept graciously the orders of the state.
This environment was not a gift that separated him from the others. This had not been ordered
for his pleasure. He was a ward of the state, and as a tool of the international communist
revolution, it was his obligation to accept whatever was ordered for the maintenance of his
ability to perform in top fashion once his training had been completed. It was his duty to the
people to accept the kind of care and feeding that would make him an indestructible and
implacable foe of the state's enemies.
> In the military academy outside of Pyongyang, Kwon had been instructed in political theory
of revolution, comparative economics, military strategy, and the languages of Chinese,
English, and Russian. In later years, when the international scene had developed to the point
where it was necessary, he was given an intensive course in Japanese.
> He was sent to special camps where he was taught the use of conventional military weapons
as well as a wide range of specialized tools restricted to the kind of silent murder that he
would be expected to carry out in the liberation of the oppressed workers of the world. As he
grew, Kwon was shown methods of devising field improvised explosives and killing devices.
As a youth, he began a never ending commitment to the development of his unarmed fighting
skills through the martial discipline of kwonbhup, a traditional Korean adaptation of classical
Chinese temple boxing. He took to the fighting form well, and under the strict coaching of his
instructors in the ancient art, his limbs had gradually been transformed into devastating
weapons.
> By the eve of his twenty-second birthday, Kwon was ready to accept a first proving mission
in which his skills would be put to the test outside of the classroom' training hall, and military
reserve. He had completed his education, All that had remained yet unfinished was the
seasoning and maturation of his skills through experience in practical field application.
> Over the next two decades, he had proven quite capable on an appalling number of
occasions, until he himself was convinced that he was invincible.
>
> Kwon looked at the naked body of the woman he had just impaled and wondered what kind
of organization could engender this kind of loyalty. Beaten, raped, drugged, and still the
woman would not talk. What capitalist government could be worthy of that degree of
sacrifice? What profit-oriented corporate exploiter of the workers could be worth all that pain
and humiliation?

>Kwon walked over and sat in the chair, his naked buttocks dropping heavily onto the round
wooden seat. The room was quiet now, save for the smallest of creaks and groans from the
rope where it crossed overhead. The female spy was out cold again.
>The North Korean lowered the unconscious Japanese woman to the floor and then placed her
face up on a table he had pulled into the center of the room. He was growing angry with
impatience. He used several strands of cotton laundry line to bind her limbs and head to the
table and picked up a thick bladed cleaver he had brought along in case things went this far.
Kwon was surprised at the woman's tenacity and how much she was willing to endure. That
was not a good sign. He set to work once again with grim determination.
>
>Though Kwon had run the risk of sending her completely over the edge before finding out
what he needed, the cleaver and then a heavy dose of the serum from the syringe eventually
took his victim to that twilight stage between final consciousness and death. Having totally
lost the facility to discern imagination from reality, speech from thought, and death from life
itself, the woman had been reduced to a whispering monotone voice that at last relayed the
facts that had been sought by her torturer. By then, he had also learned how two men and a
woman had escaped his trap at the Ying Chuk warehouse. He knew as well that Cresc was
dead.
>Kwon was surprised, and at the same time not, by the revelation of just who it was that
contended against him.
>Ninja. He had heard of Japans legendary phantom warriors of the darkness, but he had
always thought that the legends alone were all that remained. So they existed still. They had
not died out four hundred years ago as all the foolish historians liked to profess. This was
indeed a new challenge to the North Korean assassin, one that would bring with it the
requirement for more than conventional thinking and action. If the legends were true, and if
this woman's tenacity were any indication, Kwon knew that he would be up against a
thorough foe. He would be prepared.
>New tactics for the enactment of Huang Fei's plot would have to be established, now that he
knew that the Matsutani people building the energy plant were aware that they faced sinister
opposition. It was possible that the gas could still be used if by some chance their agents had
not yet put together all the facts that revealed the planned scenario. In fact the use of the gas
was one point that the Chinese military man had insisted on. The Peoples Liberation Army
officer from the Sinkiang Military Region had some burning desire to see the camps of the
refugee Tibetan monks near Ladakh wiped out. Kwon did not understand that, but did not
consider it important. That was Huang Fei's business. Kwon's job was to set the stage.
>The huge North Korean let go a long and noisy sigh, releasing the pent up energy that had
accumulated during his time with the female Matsutani agent. In what appeared to be a most
uncharacteristic gesture, he gently patted the woman's bruised and barely lifting ribcage with
the palm of his left hand as he turned away from her. The light slaps on the perspirationbeaded skin echoed quietly in the dimness of the little room on the outskirts of Sheung Shui.
It was Kwon's way of saluting a respected adversary, a tough fighter to the end, and a credit to
the Trade. That one had been a real soldier.
>
>Chapter 18
>
>Kozo Matsutani, ninja phantom warrior and eighth incarnation of the Khundor Tulku, sat
cross-legged in the center of the dark blue couch in the dim light of the darkened living room.
He was barefoot and dressed in a loose fitting outfit of pale blue drawstring pants and hooded
pullover shirt. The deep cushions and pillows that supported his seated frame in the

semidarkness gave him the effect of looking like a multifaceted blue-white diamond settled in
a velvet-lined jewelry case.
>With an expressionless face and an uplifted right hand, he offered, "I understand what you
are saying. I am not interested in religion either."
>Ken's face twisted into lines of uncomprehending annoyance.
>"You are some sort of Tibetan holy man. A tulku. How can you say that you are not
interested in religion?"
>The young agent pulled his bare legs up and crossed them beneath himself in the relaxed
lotus position, not noticing at all that he had unconsciously mirrored the elder man's pose. He
wore a pair of white exercise shorts and no shirt.
>Following their harrowing escape from the warehouse and the heartbreaking discovery of
Emi Kitagawa's body, they had quickly moved from the Wellington Hotel to a private
apartment maintained by the Matsutani Trading Company's Hong Kong director. That man
was currently in Malaysia, leaving his suite of rooms at the disposal of the Hisatsutai
members. Hitoshi Matsutani had personally arranged to get them access to the apartment.
>They would never have used the facility under normal circumstances. The risk was far too
great. It would have been much too difficult to explain the unusual nature of their comings
and goings at all odd hours, and the need for totally private conference space. The past two
days could hardly be considered normal circumstances, however. In great haste and secrecy,
the clandestine operations group had been moved into the vacant apartment situated on the
twenty-seventh floor of the Marguilson Tower. From there, they would regroup to formulate
plans for salvaging the Matsutani family's future.
>"By that I mean I am not at all interested in what passes for religion in the hearts and minds
of the vast majority of people on this earth," Kozo continued. "That is not to say that the
simple practices and holidays are of no value. Millions derive much comfort from the
traditions of their communities, be they Buddhist, Christian, or Confucian. But there is a wide
gulf between the comfort of simple ritualistic faith and the active pursuit of transcendent allpiercing enlightenment."
>Ken shook his head. "Well, sutras and mantras and the like are religion to me."
>"Yes, as they are for the masses who are capable of seeing only the surface features. If you
are a person who feels responsibility for his own life advancement and the progress of his
community, however, you could go below the surface and use the ancient teachings as tools
for the personal cultivation of freedom through spiritual power."
>The lean agent in the white running shorts stared at the tulku on the pillows before him,
annoyed by the rebuff. "I think I am quite a responsible individual as it is."
>The monk lifted both hands in an easy gesture of upturned palms. "If that label comforts
you, then it is fine."
>"I don't care about comfort. That's not the point. You are the one who started this talk of
religion, about sutras leading to powers of invisibility. I am just trying to make sense of it all
and get to the bottom of how you did those things you did at the warehouse."
>"I would like to hear more about that myself." The voice of
>Barbara Nishimura cut into their conversation coldly. "I would like to hear more about how
to become the invincible warrior."
> The two men looked up. The Japanese-American Hisatsutai agent stood in the entry to the
hallway leading back to the bedrooms of the apartment. She had wrapped herself in a thick
green terrycloth robe that was obviously borrowed from a man of much larger stature than
she. Her short black hair was rumpled and unbrushed; she wore no makeup. Barbara looked as
though she had just 4 awakened.
> Kozo nodded slightly in greeting to the unhappy woman in the doorway. He knew that she
was not at all interested in what he had to say. He turned back toward Ken. "If you wish to

explore those realms, then the first step is to rid yourself of your preconceived ideas of what I
am discussing. That is mandatory. I will be referring to things from our Japanese culture, and
what you call religion, which you may feel you are familiar with. Thinking that you already
understand them will prevent you from truly seeing how useful they are, however. You must
be able to accept these ideas and practices as totally new, completely unheard of, and radically
different from what you have experienced before. The first step is to realize that we are not
dealing with religion as the masses see it."
> Kozo reached out with his right arm to pick up a tall glass of ice water from the table before
him. The glass left behind a ring of water droplets that had beaded on the outside of the cold
vessel and run down to the marble surface beneath it. Kozo drank from the glass, partly to
relieve thirst and partly to give Ken a chance to contemplate the meaning of his words.
> "You begin by focusing on the present moment of the eternal span. The current moment is
all that exists. You will have to operate from this realization if you are to reach true
invincibility."
> Odate continued to stare at the tulku. The weary woman leaned against the wall of the
hallway. Neither spoke.
> "From that state of consciousness, any attacker who faces you represents only the quality of
the energy that exists between you for that minute fraction of a second. You do not have any
fears of what he could do to you if he gets hold of you in the next moment. You have no
recollection of your own success or failure the moment before. You place no value on the
outcome of the clash. There is no significance to the clash whatsoever.
> "No significance?" taunted Barbara from the doorway. "No significance? Is that what you
would have told Emi before she ran into whatever monster it was that destroyed her?"
>Kozo turned his head slowly. It was as though he were a character moving in a slow motion
film projection. He stared at the female agent in the door frame. "Yes. If she had asked me
about ultimate significance, I would have had to tell her just that."
>Barbara walked on bare feet toward the seated monk. "I don't understand you. You are
supposed to be some sort of holy man, a teacher of what you probably call karmic doctrine or
something like that. Reincarnation. Now you say that the painful death of one of our own
family members is 'insignificant?' How do you put the two together?" Barbara's voice had a
hard edge to it, and her physical posture bristled with hostility.
>Kozo spoke with no defensiveness, his voice an even monotone. "The conventional cocktail
party small-talk concept of reincarnation comes nowhere near to covering the actual
mechanics of how embodied energy reappears over the eons. From the viewpoint of vast
eternity, when you think of all the deaths that Emi's spirit would have experienced through
what you think of as the reincarnation cycle, why is this death any more or less different?
From the eternal viewpoint, perhaps this death is as small in significance as is going to sleep
unhappy one night in the vast stretch of days that make up one lifetime."
>"That's easy to say if you are not at all close to the person being murdered."
>"It is not 'easy to say.' That is the point. For most people, it requires extensive training,
meditation, and cultivation of life experiences to be able to see and acknowledge the ultimate
insignificance of everything that surrounds us."
>The cross-legged ninja monk gazed evenly into the woman's eyes. She stared back at him.
"Sit down, Barbara. There is much in you that seeks expression."
>She continued to stand before him defiantly, her arms crossed over her chest in the
voluminous green sleeves. "Sit down, Barbara," he finally ordered for a second time.
>Without looking behind her, she backed up and lowered herself onto the couch beside Ken.
>Kozo leaned forward. "When I say there is no significance to the clash, I am speaking of the
perspective from the kongokai or cosmic realm of realities. Certainly there is a taizokai,
material realm view, as well. You loved and now miss Emi. Your present-moment awareness

finds her loss to be of significance to you on a personal level. Of course. That is a part of the
richness of being alive. If you are restricted to that personal level of feelings and desires in a
potentially fatal showdown, however, you can lose sight of the subtle signals your assailant
sends out, and find yourself overwhelmed as a result."
>"I disagree," snapped Barbara. "From my experience, I have found that the more convinced I
am of my pending victory, the more successfully and quickly I can bring the clash to an end.
If I pretended that my actions had no significance, I would have been killed years ago." In
final punctuation of her remarks, Nishimura pulled her legs up and crossed them beneath her
on the couch.
>Ken looked over at Barbara. She was sitting as he was, with her forearms resting on bare
knees that protruded upward from the heavy folds of green terrycloth.
>Her scandalously immodest pose surprised Ken. It was as if she were trying every trick
possible to discomfort the tulku on the couch across from theirs. Ken knew that she did not
trust the sudden reappearance of this man whom they were told was the long lost brother of
their company's chairman. She had gone dangerously beyond the limits of required action at
the warehouse. On top of that, she had not taken Emi's death well. That was most unusual for
this woman that Ken had always known to be the coldest of professionals when the task
demanded it. Now, any comfort that was offered her was quickly spurned. She had dwelled
behind an invisible wall since they had gotten the word from the Wellington management that
the Hong Kong police had news of an unfortunate discovery.
>Ken looked across at Kozo. The monk was staring back into Barbara's eyes. He seemed
totally oblivious to the provocative display that would have pulled any other healthy man's
eyes to a lower point of focus. With an awareness of the growing nervous energy that he held
trapped inside of his body, Ken again looked back at Barbara. She was wordlessly returning
the tulku's gaze, staring him fully in the eyes. Perhaps she was waiting for a reply to her
challenge. Ken wanted to speak, just to break the tension, but could find no words.
> The Khundor Tulku remained in his relaxed lotus posture, as though suspended outside of
the passage of time. Barbara as well continued to sit in her variation of the lotus crossed-leg
seat. Neither spoke at all. Neither looked as though they were about to speak.
> Odate continued to turn his head discreetly from one to the other, as though following an
invisible tennis volley of unspoken energy. The room seemed to have taken on a strange
quality of light. He gradually became aware that the warrior monk had no intention
whatsoever of replying to Barbara's rebuttal. Their gaze had become a staring contest, a
wordless test of wills. Ken should have been amused. Instead, he was totally uncomfortable
and worked at relaxing himself without moving his body at all. He felt completely outside of
the unusual exchange of energy going on before him.
>Time had extended and then frozen in the Hong Kong condominium living room. Barbara's
breathing rhythm had come into synchronization with that of the man in pale blue. He had
first altered his inhalations and exhalations to match hers, and then had subtly taken command
to lead her on to a deeper and more relaxed state of breathing. She grew increasingly intrigued
by the play of energy between their eyes.
>Barbara watched the thoughts bubble up out of nowhere in her mind. Scattered, disjointed
images and memories played as fleeting images on a cinema screen. She wondered with bitter
amusement if Kozo was trying to hypnotize her.
>Ken noticed a stiffness move across Barbara's shoulders. She lifted her arms slightly and
appeared about to look away. Perhaps she had grown weary of their little game.
>Kozo spoke immediately. His voice was a low and barely audible monotone. "Stay where
you are. There is no need to look away." He continued coaxingly, "That is fine. Fine. just stay
in my eyes, right where you are. No need to do anything at all. just stay in my eyes."
>

>Curious, Barbara again adjusted her gaze to counterpierce that of the tulku. She became
fascinated with what appeared to be a fan of light that emanated from somewhere behind the
man's shoulders and head. It was as though he were glowing or radiating a form of pale
brightness from the surface of his skin. His face moved in and out of focus. He seemed to age
and then regress right before her eyes. At moments his features were those of a charming
youth and at others he displayed the visage of a terrifying skeleton. Barbara was spellbound.
>Minutes passed like hours. The two remained locked in their unspeaking communion.
Breathing in harmony, gazing in parallel, mirroring each other's pose, the man and woman
allowed the rest of the room to fade from awareness.
>A sudden shadow seemed to pass across Barbara's face. Ken saw her lips lighten and her
eyes narrow:
>"What was that?" Kozo asked with suddenness, continuing to hold her in his vision.
>Barbara remained silent. She seemed to be weighing something in her mind. "What? What
was what?" she finally replied with overly defensive tones.
>Kozo smiled ever so gently. "Whatever it was that clouded your
>consciousness a moment ago. What was it that came to mind and
>troubled you?"
>Barbara lifted her chin slightly, defiantly. She pulled the terrycloth panels of her borrowed
robe down between her thighs with newly found modesty. "I don't know what you mean."
>"Do not look away, Barbara. Stay here. Look at me. Look at me.
>Reluctantly, like a small child dared to do the fearful and too proud to admit dread, Barbara
stared back at Kozo. She willfully settled into the couch cushions once again.
>Almost immediately, Barbara's jaw tightened as it had before. She pulled her eyes away
from Kozo's and looked up at the ceiling.
>"What is it, Barbara? What is there that you do not wish to see?"
>Barbara choked back a sob. "Nothing. It's nothing."
>"Then why do you look away from me?"
>Barbara was silent, refusing to look back at Kozo. Ken tried his best to disappear from view
by sinking into the couch fabric.
>"Barbara, look at me. Stay in my eyes."
>The woman lowered her gaze and stared at Kozo Matsutani. Tears welled up in her eyes and
ran down her cheeks. She rubbed at her nose with the back of her wrist, but did not look away.
>"Barbara, what did you see?" The voice was still a soothing monotone, almost disembodied,
not to be refused.
>Barbara took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then let it go with a series of shudders
that rocked her entire body. She took a second breath and suddenly blurted out in a defeated
little girl voice, "I just had a memory of my childhood. A sad memory. I don't know where it
came from." She sighed, still looking into the eyes of the warrior monk. "That's all. I'm okay."
>"That is all, Barbara?" Kozo smiled in easy irony. "I think not. What was it you
remembered? What was that sad memory?"
>Barbara said nothing. Kozo allowed her to sit in silence without prompting. She sniffled and
struggled to return his gaze, the most pathetic of expressions on her face.
>In a voice that slit like a knife, Kozo had finally whispered, "Tell me where you got all that
toughness, Barbara. Look at me, Barbara, and tell me how you became tough enough to be
one of the best professional killers in the business."
>Barbara Nishimura began to cry. Hugging herself and rocking back and forth, she tried to
stare back at Kozo. He faded from view through the thick veil of her tears.
>"Why are you doing this to me?" she wailed. "Why?"
>Kozo answered with a level, emotionless voice. "Because you asked me to tell you how you
could become an invincible warrior. This is your first step." The monk in blue continued to

gaze into the woman's watery eyes. "And also because you are of my family, Barbara. I love
you. I care about you. That is why."
>In a series of shudders and walling moans, Barbara fell apart. She cried for all the anguish
she endured, for all the ones she too loved but always seemed to lose somehow, and for the
little girl who had learned to grow up tough enough to kill without remorse.
>Kozo Matsutani made no move to either comfort or further prod the woman. He continued to
sit in his lotus posture, as he had throughout the entire episode, and to look across into her
eyes. He let her cries echo in the valley of his silence.
>Barbara eventually tired, and rubbed the edges of her knuckles along the lower lids of her
eyes. In the smallest of voices, she said, "I remembered how different I was from the others.
The other kids." She let go of a heaving sigh. "My parents were moved east after the war.
They had been in one of the Japanese-American detention camps, and when they got out they
were sponsored in a move to Virginia. That's where I was born."
>She stopped and pressed a fist into her lower lip. "I was the only Japanese-looking kid
around in that little town. It was more than ten years after the war, but the others still gave me
hell about being a 'Jap.
>Barbara coughed to disguise a sob. "It really hurt, all that teasing and taunting. It wasn't
meant in fun and I knew it."
>The ' tulku said nothing. He knew that she would continue. Barbara swallowed hard.
>"I guess your heart only has to break so many times and then the scar tissue makes it tough
enough to be unbreakable, huh?" She smiled mirthlessly.
>Kozo Matsutani knew all about broken hearts. He nodded coolly.
>Barbara sniffed twice and looked across at the man who had seemed so merciless in his
silent directing of her emotions. He was just sitting there, as though none of this had ever
happened.
>"When I talk about focusing on the present moment in combat, Barbara, I mean being clear
enough in your own mind to know who it is you are facing. Demons left over from the pains
of childhood work right alongside your adversary. Those demons are ghosts left over from
another time. They have nothing to do with the present moment. If you have already cleared
out all the demons, then you have only the external adversary left to overcome."
>Kozo rose from the couch with an effortless glide and walked over to Barbara. He stood
before her and looked down at her, all crumpled and defeated and looking back up at him. He
reached out with his right hand and gently brushed the tears away from her eyes, tears and
years shed so unwillingly and yet so necessarily. She reached up and caught his hand as he
went to pull it away.
>Kozo gave her hand a gentle squeeze. He then looked over at the silent male ninja.
>"You two be of comfort to each other tonight. We leave for Ladakh tomorrow."
>
>
>Chapter 19
>
> Dr. Charleston Lee Gripped the two chrome handles at the lower edge of the rectangular
brushed-steel door. The chubby coroner's assistant in the white smock leaned back and used
his lurching body weight to get the steel bearings in motion. The seven-foot-long roller
drawer extended out into the chilly tiled room with a subdued rumble.
> Teruo Ozawa thanked the man and mentioned that they would not be too long. The
Matsutani Shoji director of Field Project Operations was dressed in a conservative dark-blue
suit with a white-on-white cotton shirt accented by a burgundy silk tie. He carried a bulging
manila envelope stuffed with the official government authorization papers, Hong Kong police
release forms, and the procedural directions for the cremation process. The rotund morgue

attendant nodded understandingly and backed out of the room. The glass-paneled door hissed
closed behind him and a thick silence descended upon the two men who remained.
> Ozawa stared at the draped form at rest on the vault drawer and let go the smallest of sighs.
His heart ached. This was turning out to be the costliest and most frustrating confrontation to
assault the Matsutani family in postwar history. It also was obvious the family had more yet to
lose in this struggle than in any other in which he had ever been involved.
> The man who personally supervised the clandestine operations sanctioned by board
chairman Hitoshi Matsutani looked across the cold white tarp that covered the body. On the
other side of the extended drawer stood the rigid form of the Matsutani ryu ninjutsu
saikoshihan. Like Ozawa, Toru Kitagawa wore a blue business suit and white dress shirt. A
tiny golden Matsutani corporate lapel pin gleamed in the overhead lights as he swayed ever so
slightly on his feet.
>Ozawa had explained to the supervisor that they were representatives of the company for
which the deceased girl had worked in Japan. As a consolation to their late employee's elderly
widowed mother they had been sent to Hong Kong to claim the body of the kidnap victim.
The tour she had won in a sales administration contest was her first visit to Hong Kong, they
commented. How bitterly tragic was the irony that her well-earned sightseeing trip should end
like this. Why of all tourists did fate have to single her out to fall victim to the whims of the
underground criminal element, he had asked with shaking head.
>With surprisingly steady hands, Kitagawa reached out and took the edge of the heavy sheet
between his fingers and thumbs and began to lift. Before the cloth had risen far, he suddenly
allowed it to fall back into place and withdrew his hands. The man with the sun-browned
leather face stood there motionlessly staring at the shape of the body revealed by the folds in
the pale sheet.
>Ozawa could empathize with his tough associate, who had grown up in the business
alongside him. While Ozawa dealt with the tactical aspects of their projects and Kitagawa
handled the physical execution of those plans, both recognized that the very nature of their
trade brought the hard icy edge of tragedy into potential striking range every day. It was
always business as usual. Though no tragedy was ever pleasant, or even acceptable, none had
been harder on the heart than this.
>"Kitagawa-san, I will be outside the door. There are telephone calls I must make. Plans must
be put in motion. You will hopefully excuse me at this difficult time." Ozawa bowed
respectfully'. The calls certainly could wait, but his presence in the room had almost violated
the privacy of his friend. He would save Kitagawa much face by not being there should the
grieving warrior falter in his composure. Indeed, Ozawa's composure was near breaking as
well.
>Toru returned the bow wordlessly and heard the entry door open and close with its
pneumatic hiss. He was now alone in the refrigerated enclosure with the body of the deceased
Matsutani Shoji Ltd. electrical engineer that had been born to his brother's wife less than three
decades before.
>He lifted the sheet and looked down at the still form on the slab. His mind locked onto a
state of leveled emotionlessness as he transcended his past role as guardian of the growing
Emi Kitagawa, and took on his new role as the investigator seeking facts that could serve as
clues to the timely unraveling of this mystery that threatened to devour them all. Kitagawa
had viewed many a corpse in his days. There was little about the death process that could
shock him now.
>In addition to the usual bluing and spotting effects that accompany rigor mortis as the
settling blood drains to the lower side of the newly deceased body, Kitagawa noticed heavy
bruising along the girl's left shoulder and the left side of her head. She had been hit with an
elongated object, and hit hard. Her wrists showed signs of deep abrasion. She had been bound

tightly, possibly hung by the wrists, the ninja trainer surmised. A row of darkened blotches in
the skin along her ribs revealed that she had taken several impacts to the torso as well. The
limited size of the blue-black markings suggested that a weapon of smaller size, perhaps a
large fist, had done the damage.
>'Death had been induced by a lethal injection, the coroner's office had informed them. The
puncture wounds on the inside of the woman's arm had certainly suggested that drugs were
involved, and a blood sample had proven to be saturated with a deadly overdose of ketamine
animal tranquilizer. That was as far as the Hong Kong police had gotten with their
examination. An analysis of the chemicals had been prevented by the intervention of Ozawa
and Kitagawa, who had arrived with special government clearance papers. Matsutani's
investigators would carry out a less official, less public autopsy, and the coroner's office
would have one less case to burden its overworked staff.
>His surface investigative examination completed, Toru turned away and took off his coat.
There was no point in probing into the girl's internal organs. The Hong Kong police
investigative staff had already plumbed all body orifices to check for evidence or even
messages that could have been lodged there. The precise moment and method of death were
really immaterial to the dead girl's uncle at any rate. Emi was dead. No amount of knowledge
could bring her back now. What really mattered was who had killed his niece, and how they
had come about the knowledge that she was of sufficient threat to them to warrant being
terminated.
> Kitagawa removed his gold necktie and unfastened the two top buttons that held his shirt
collar closed. He rolled his sleeves up above his elbows and picked up the large sponge that
floated in the basin of mildly sudsed water. Slowly, thoroughly, beginning with the forehead,
he began to bathe the battered and stiffened body of his niece.
>Unlike the western world with its professional death handlers, Japanese custom requires the
surviving family members to prepare the departed relative for cremation. There is no
embalming or blood draining as there would be required in a western funeral home. There is
no elaborate cosmetic reconstruction of a lifelike continence on the decreased. After sponge
bathing the departed, a simple white shinshozoku funeral kimono is wrapped around the body.
The light cloth garment is folded with the right lapel overlapping the left, contrary to the left
over right of the living, and the body is placed in a simple wooden coffin for burning.
>Though it would have been much more routine for female members of the family to prepare
the deceased, Toru Kitagawa had found himself in the position where he was the only relative
present following Emi's death. The tough instructor of his family's fighters worked on alone
with sponge in hand.
> With frozen face, he lifted a hand and held it firmly in his own, moving the moist sponge
over the skin. He could remember vividly the day that hand had first taken his. His own
brother, a much younger man than himself, had been declared missing somewhere in the
Middle East along with his wife. Emi's parents had been sent as a team on company business
of the underground variety and were thought to have gotten involved in a crossfire generated
by the then-brewing Israeli and Arab conflict. No details were ever uncovered. The little girl,
Emi, had been taken by her father's brother, in the family tradition, as his own.
> Toru had come to pick the girl up from her mother's parents' home. Knowing nothing of the
realities and finalities of death, the tiny one had looked him in the eye and reached up for his
hand, just as though it had been Toru all along who had always returned from field work to
take her back home.
>This hand felt so cool, so stiff. That little hand had been so warm and active, clutching his as
though it never planned to let go again. That little hand used to scrub his back in the steamy
cedar-paneled ofuro as he hunched forward on the low wooden stool, until she had begun to
enter womanhood and it had no longer seemed appropriate to share the family bath. She had

worked so hard to please him, even as a youth. Such a serious little person, always working
hard on her school lessons, scurrying around tidying up the home of her widowed uncle, she
had seemed to somehow skip right by the frivolity of childhood and the traditional silliness of
preadolescence.
>Kitagawa's mind reflected on how fleetingly the years go by in this vast mystery called life.
The eons of eternity stretch out in either direction, creating what is seen as the illusion of past
and present, and bracket those relatively few moments that are recognized consciously as the
present moments of life. The tiny child he had never asked for had grown so quickly to
adulthood and then had been taken from him. She was gone before he had even had the
chance to realize just how much she had captured his heart, just how much joy she had come
to bring him in his cold and tight little world of delivering death to what he perceived as
cancerous elements of world society. She had loved him as a father, and he had never stopped
to acknowledge the power of that wordless statement her whole life had presented. He knew
now that he had loved her as a daughter, and that he had never allowed himself to
acknowledge the depth and intensity that realization could have brought to the busy
complexity of his world. There had been so little time, so little time.
>The master ninja looked at the bruised face reposed below him in the ultimate peace of
death. He lifted the damp sponge to the stilled brow and smoothed the eyebrows with little
curving turns of his wrist. Could this be the face of the happy teenager that he had seen off to
America for an education in the English language and her chosen field of engineering?
Kitagawa stared at the face for several minutes, his mind tumbling with competing thoughts
and memories, his professional detachment fading rapidly.
>"I will miss... he began aloud in a whisper, hoping that by speaking he could break the
tension building in his jaws. "I will miss . . ." Kitagawa stopped and straightened his back and
took a deep ragged breath and altered the line of his thoughts.
>The tiniest of smiles lightened his craggy features. "Do you know what I wished when they
told me they had found you ... this way? Do you know what I wished, Emi-chan?"
>Toru Kitagawa cleared his throat.
>"I wished we could have gone back to that springtime you were nine, and the cherry blossom
viewing you and I went all the way to Iga to see.
>"I wished I could have seen you in that same little kimono again, that bright blue one with
the orange and yellow and lavender flowers painted along the sleeves. You had silk flowers in
your hair. I wished I could have just once more lifted you up over my head the way I did so
that you could smell the blooming petals. You laughed so and ran in the wind that shook the
cherry blossoms so gently on their limbs. You said they were waving at me.
>"I remember that now. You laughed and made me wave back to them and I felt so foolish
with my hand flapping in the air like that. I finally had to laugh at myself."
>The man stared at the face below him in silence. He took another deep breath and spoke, as
though starting a new conversation with someone who had just entered the room. "I wished
we could have gone again down along the vendor's booths below the Hakuhojo castle." His
smile slowly flattened into a thin line. "We ate those mitarashidango snacks on the little sticks.
>"You were such a happy child, so beautiful in your holiday kimono, so beautiful in all your
innocence. You turned and stamped your leg and squealed down at me because you had run to
the top of the long winding path below the moat wall faster than I had."
>Toru Kitagawa took a deep breath. "And do you know what else I wished, little Emi, when
they told me?
>"With all my heart I wished that I could have gone back and bought you that silk doll, the
one in the glass box with the black lacquered framework, the one you begged me to buy for
you. I said we had no way to get her back to Kumamoto with us. You said all right, you
understood and did not really want it that badly anyway. You said that it looked too affected, a

little too garish. You said you did not want it. But I saw the tears well up in your eyes as you
turned away. You never knew that I saw those tears but," he clenched his teeth together, "but I
did. I saw the tears, and I did not do a thing about them."
>Toru Kitagawa let go of a wavering sigh that moaned and echoed and faded in the coldness
of the bleak antiseptic enclosure.
>"Oh Emi-chan, I wished I had bought that doll and ten others for you and carried them all
the way home from Iga on my shoulders if that is what it had taken .... 55
>Toru the battler shook his head back and forth, back and forth, breathing deeply. It was so
difficult to breathe. He was hot despite the room's temperature-controlled coolness. A new
emotion rose in his tight chest.
>"Do you know what else I wished, little Emi? Do you know what else I wished?"
>Toru sighed and then slowed. "I wished that everyone in the world had a little one just like
you to follow them around and remind them of what is really important in life, of what really
matters."
>The gruff ninja looked up at the ceiling, down at his hands, and over at the sponge floating
motionlessly in its shallow plastic basin. He cleared his throat and drew in a long slow breath.
"That is what I wished when they told me you were gone forever.
>"I wished that every time someone thought about firebombing a hotel lobby or kidnapping
some ambassador's family or highjacking a planeload of tourists, they would have a set of
eyes like yours that could look into theirs and remind them of what really matters in this
lifetime that is so short. So very, very short.
>"If every heart had its reflection in the eyes of a little girl wearing a blue kimono before a
sunset in their homeland, how much more tranquil and peaceful and meaningful a place this
world would be. I know that now."
>Kitagawa leaned over the roller drawer, his shoulders supported on extended arms, his palms
flattened on the cold steel surface beneath the woman's body. "Little Emi, you are gone, you
are gone before I had the chance ... before I thought to ... before . . ."
>The echoes from the man's quiet voice reverberated back at him hauntingly from the lifeless
tile and steel surfaces that surrounded him. The room began to spin and tilt. His chest lifted
and dropped alarmingly in erratic shudders that disoriented his entire body. His eyes burned
and sight blurred, and then vanished; his lips quivered and reached out in speechless motion.
>The Matsutani saikoshihan felt his legs weaken and his knees buckle and for the first time in
over fifty-three years, Toru Kitagawa wept.
>
>Chapter 20
>
>HEAT WAVES SHIMMERED OFF the sun-bleached concrete. Wayward seabirds looped
and turned in the rising drafts of the hot winds that lifted the pale dust and moved it across the
taxiway leading out to Hong Kong's Kai Tak International Airport departure runway. Heavy
hydraulic whines screamed out in low-pitched chorus as the crated cylinders lifted into
alignment with the gaping cargo door in the side of the aging Trident 2E. The thick black
conveyor belt jolted, then engaged, and the massive block of wood and steel shuddered its
way into the side of the leased aircraft. Ground crews whistled and waved in horizontal
sweeps to indicate that the entire consignment had been placed aboard. The crate had been the
last of a shipment destined for Kashmir.
>Zhelyo Karushilev watched as the cargo door pulled shut with a shriek and a slam. He held
his hand up over his pale brow to shield his eyes from the intense glare of the Hong Kong sun,
and his lips curled back in unconscious mimic of the squint that tightened his eyelids against
the harsh October morning brightness. The gaunt Bulgarian assassin turned and headed

toward the shade of the freight hangar. The phosgene gas had been loaded. They were ready to
fly.
>Karushilev opened the battered wooden door to the Fourwinds Cargo office in the back of
the open hangar. Inside the dark cubicle, a small desk strewn with papers of all hues was
manned by Sergei Orosov. Behind the Bulgarian at the desk lounged the hulking form Of Il
Nam Kwon.
>Kwon rose from the worn green vinyl couch like a storm cloud billowing up over the tundra.
"All is completed?" he asked in English.
>Karushilev nodded curtly in the doorway. "The pilot is on his way now."
>With the discovery of the Matsutani corporate agents' penetration of their plan, Kwon had
opted to take the lethal shipment directly into the target site. The Delhi layover would be
impossible and was unnecessary under the new circumstances. Time was of the essence now,
if they were to move before the Japanese corporation's ninja had a chance to regroup and head
off the attack.
>There was no way to contact Huang Fei directly, to inform him of the change in timing.
Kwon was far from his secured transmitter and scrambler, and had no way of knowing where
to reach the Peoples Liberation Army officer even if he had been able to gain access to the
classified communications unit. Huang Fei and his people would be en route to the KashmirChina border, heading south somewhere through the Kunlun Mountains.
>The three killers left the small office and walked through the empty hangar toward the
brilliance of the sunlight beyond. Each carried a compact duffel with minimal gear and
clothing changes. Sergei Orosov also carried a long narrow black case tucked under his right
arm.
>
>Kwon and the Bulgarians ignored the Chinese ground crews bustling beneath the plane and
wordlessly climbed the mobile staircase to the open door behind the cockpit windows.
Without even a glance behind, the three ducked into the blackness of the craft and made their
way to the canvas sling seats that awaited
>
>them.
>Earlier in the morning, Kwon had chosen to continue a mild deception when the Bulgarian
demolitions expert had inquired as to why they had selected the awkward Seoul-to-Hong
Kong-to-Delhi route in the first place. It would have been far simpler, Karushilev had offered,
to have used a military air cargo route through the Peoples Republic of China. The canisters
could then have been smuggled over the border to Ladakh and none of the danger of detection
and compromise would have been a consideration.
>Kwon had maintained an expressionless face and commented that it was not up to his
superiors to question the policy behind the orders they received. There was doubtlessly some
valid reason for the plans that had been forged in the committee conferences somewhere in
Beijing. It was not up to the North Korean professional to demand explanations beyond what
was deemed fit for him to know.
>Karushilev had nodded quietly in agreement, still perplexed, but well aware of the
inappropriateness of questioning on.
>Kwon felt the plane begin to move. The engines had whistled and screamed and burst into
thrust. Now they were rolling out toward the runway that would send them out over the waters
of Victoria Harbor and off to India. The massive North Korean reclined back in his seat and
closed his eyes. They would be following the sun as they circled the globe, and the day would
be a long ordeal.
>One never knew the full range of loyalties carried by these hired associates, pondered Kwon
from behind lowered eyelids. The Bulgarians and the dead Albanian had been part of the

package. Those arrangements had been handled by Huang Fei's people, so the Europeans must
have been screened for security and directability. Use them as necessary, Kwon had been told.
He assumed that there was no need whatsoever to explain the full story to the men.
>Perhaps they would not be alarmed at all even if they did know just exactly what the full
implications of this project were. And then again perhaps they would bolt from the scene if
they caught on to the true nature of this particular scheme.
>There were so many variations and degrees to party loyalty. There were commune-ists and
then there were communists. There were those who held to the letter of the writings of the
socialist founders of the last century and then there were those who argued for the cultural
interpretation of the spirit of the economic philosophies championed by the worldwide
communist movement. There were those whose sacrifices were inspired by commitment to
ideals and then there were those whose self-negation constituted personal weakness in the
battle for economic stability under the red flag. Kwon wondered just what motivated his two
accomplices.
>Kwon knew that in the capitalist realm, money and money alone constituted the basis for
power. Those who could purchase could have possessions. Those who could pay others could
have loyalty.
>Those who could accumulate wealth could attain the power of personal choice in life.
>In a society where the personal hoarding of money, possessions, and property was
considered to be poisonous to the collective heart of the people, power took other
manifestations. Privileges, access to information, freedom to travel, and control over others
represented the ultimate form of power in action.
> With the liberation of China, all citizens were brought under the equalizing control of the
state. Once-wealthy urban merchants now toiled alongside other diggers carving out rural
irrigation projects. Once-elevated university intellectuals now worked with wrench in hand to
keep road paving equipment in order. Once-pampered housewives now trained for combat
with rifles along the frontiers and borders of their land mass.
> The automobiles that carried important businessmen about the streets of old Peking in the
previous era still existed, however. The seaside villas once inhabited by the idle rich still
continued to stand along the scenic rocky coastlines, nonetheless. There were still jets and
larger apartments and nicer bolts of cloth, despite the new flag that had flown over the
Chinese corner of the continent for the past four decades. Someone had to be using those
leftovers from the oppressed ages. Someone had to be doling out those privileges to favored
acquaintances. Kwon had made it his business to become a part of that favored elite.
> Assisting Kwon in his quest for the power of the ability to direct his own life had been the
Peoples Republic of China military officer Huang Fei. Like Kwon, Huang also had come to
discover the reality that good intentions alone are no guarantee of justice working its will.
There were lesser men that sometimes bumbled into crucial points of power along the path of
history. When it came time for those men to take the reins of destiny, they balked. It was then
up to those not yet officially in the seats of power to assume the command required of them.
Huang's assessment of the troubled border between China and India fell into that category of
opportunity either overlooked or ignored by the committees in Beijing. Therefore, if Beijing
refused to give Huang the official sanction to move into the territory that had traditionally
been claimed as theirs, it was up to Huang Fei to engineer his own means for the advancement
of the Peoples Liberation Movement.
>Kwon looked over at the two Bulgarians. Both were leaning out of their seats to peer
through the windows beside their left shoulders. He watched them for several moments and
then leaned his head back again and closed his eyes.
>The Korean was unsure of how much to expose to 40rosov and Karushilev at this point. He
knew not how they would receive the news that their project had been conceived, nurtured,

and given birth by a small handful of Chinese military officers. The reason that the gas had to
be smuggled into the Ladakh range was because the policy makers of the Peoples Republic of
China were being kept totally in the dark concerning the details of the plot. The deaths of the
thousands of Tibetans and Indians would be as much a shock to Beijing as it would be to New
Delhi. Therefore, the only acceptable route to the site of the planned massacre was right
through the enemy's very own living room.
>Kwon became aware of Karushilev's voice calling his name out over and over again. The
assassin from Pyongyang opened one eye and glanced to his side. The Bulgarian was
crouched beside him.
>"Orosov and I have been discussing strategy options for Ladakh. We have gone over the
possibilities many times." The European seemed awkwardly uncomfortable, tense in his poor
job of concealing his doubts. Kwon knew what the man would soon be bringing up.
>The Korean looked aside at Zhelyo Karushilev. "And?" he spit impatiently.
>Karushilev would not be stopped. "If these Matsutani ninja know our intentions, does that
not make our original plan totally useless? They will be sitting in wait for us. The importation
of the canisters into the construction site will be an impossibility."
>"I have no intention of taking the cylinders into the plant," explained Kwon in a riddle that
piqued the Bulgarian even more.
>"Then our work, this plane ... ?"
>"We will need the poison. That aspect of the plan does not change."
>Karushilev continued to stare at the Korean.
>"We use the gas as planned, but not from within the energy plant," said Kwon.
>"But what if these Japanese go to the Indian authorities, or the United Nations? What if they
expose the plan before we have the opportunity to carry out our purpose?"
>"They will not," stated Kwon flatly. "They would never admit to their so-called 'free world'
that they have the capabilities of doing that sort of investigation. These ninja are things of the
darkness. They fear exposure under the light of day." Kwon offered the mirthless smile again.
"They are trapped with their knowledge and have nowhere to turn for deliverance."
>Karushilev pressed on. ".Yes, but what if they do go to the public media with their
accusations?"
>"That would be little problem." Kwon's lips turned down in a reverse smile and he waved in
dismissal. "We gas the Indians anyway, and blame it on your friends the Soviets in
Afghanistan."
>The Korean laughed and laughed as the Bulgarian stared uncomfortably. Kwon looked down
at Karushilev with a look of evil in his eyes. "No one ever confronts the Soviets, especially
the Japanese."
>
>Ken Odate squinted into the brilliance of the reflected sun skittering across the ripples on the
surface of the Indus River. The tiny explosions of white light danced, ducked, and weaved
among themselves, here, there, now there, in endless motion and change. The Matsutani ryu
ninja more felt than saw the illusory colors of the light. The impression was transfixing, like
something utterly removed from the realities of mundane sight.
>Beyond the stretch of moving water rose an awesome range of jagged white peaks. Like the
lower fangs of some huge and unimaginable beast, the silver-white speartips of the Himalayas
reached far into the pristine blueness of the midday sky.
>It felt wonderful to be outside again, even though the air at fifteen thousand feet seemed less
than rich. The previous day and a half had been spent in concentrated evaluation of the
security procedures that had been enacted following the Hong Kong emergency. Ken's
Hisatsutai had worked alongside the Musasabishu in running entry checks and briefing the
plant personnel on the newly instigated safety regimen. There had been what seemed like

miles of the steel tubing to follow, dozens of generator substations to explore, and then the
central control and mixing facility to secure. Camera scan relay networks, worker
identification checkpoints, and meticulous timetables to cover the delivery and receiving of
needed supplies had been put into operation. Squads of security personnel, assigned in
shifting three-man units to make betrayal more difficult to accomplish now roamed the
Matsutani plant site.
>Seated on the banks of the source of the Indus, Odate looked up from the sparkling current
before him to gaze at the sun overhead. Its radiance warmed his upturned face and, coupled
with the bracing bite of the wind at his side, worked to thoroughly invigorate him. The energy
generation facility, with its fluorescent labyrinths of constricting corridors, lay forgotten
somewhere behind him now.
>In complete spontaneity, he began to twist his shoulders from side to side, breathing in and
out deeply as he moved the bones of his body. Small muffled pops sounded as he turned his
spine in spiraling flexes against his hips. Since leaving Hong Kong to fly to their site in the
Indus Valley high in the Ladakh Range of the Himalayas, he had found himself neglecting his
junan taiso, the ninja's yoga-like stretching exercises for suppleness and flexibility. He now
took the time to work his body, bending, turning, and pulling, his muscles enjoying the
pleasure of the exquisite strain.
>Ken's concentration was interrupted by the tolling of first one and then several distant bells.
The many pitches blended, harmonized, and contrasted with each other, losing themselves to
discordant echoes throughout the far-off peaks.
>It was then that he first noticed the clustered collection of redroofed structures that towered
above the river's banks upstream from his position. The young ninja rose to his feet, dusted
the light layer of -rock and twig debris from the seat of his gray fatigue trousers, and began to
walk upstream. Curiosity aroused, Ken somehow felt compelled to visit the white-walled
buildings that appeared to be less than a mile away. It was as though something up there was
calling out to him, beckoning him on.
>With an afternoon of leisure at his disposal, he decided to explore. It would be a great relief
to get away from anything having to do with the mind-pressing challenges of energy
production briefings, plant tours, threats of family annihilation, and "lessons" from their board
chairman's exasperating younger brother, Kozo. Ken looked forward to the diversion.
>A towering doorway lured him into the darkness of the interior beyond an open bare dirt
courtyard. Stepping through the portal in the side of the tall sloping white wall, Ken paused
momentarily to allow his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. His nostrils were assailed by the
strong pungent odor of burning incense. Droning, reverberating chants drifted eerily from
somewhere deep inside the ancient structure. The young agent realized that he was in a
temple.
>As his eyes gradually became used to the subdued lighting, Ken began to make out figures
of maroon-draped holy men moving slowly about in the smoky interior of the thick-walled
building. They carried their hands in front of their chests, palms flattened against one another,
strings of beads looped over their fingers.
>At the center of the high-ceilinged room sat a huge bronze figure in a folded-leg meditation
posture. It must have been over twenty feet tall. Unlike the Buddhist statues Ken had seen in
Japan, this one had a long and narrow face with a pointed topknot of curly hair, instead of the
broad square face and flattened coif There was the smallest of smiles gracing the lips, as
though the larger-than-life deity were privy to some ultimate and sublime joke denied to lesser
beings.
>Some of the monks knelt to the side of the statue and played a variety of unusual musical
instruments that were totally unknown to the ninja from Kyushu. Small drums, reedy flutes
and trumpets, and cymbals produced a jarring cacophony of buzzing, whimpering, and ringing

tones. A chorus of voices chanted and sang along with the holy orchestra. It was like entering
a strange and forbidden dimension.
>Ken walked carefully through the artificial twilight, drinking in the surreal sights, sounds,
and smells that came at him in dreamlike waves. The monks in their maroon robes seemed
oblivious to his presence. The few that had passed by him had nodded in greeting and moved
on as though a half-Japanese, half-British foreigner dressed in gray combat fatigues was a
commonplace sight in this remote stretch of the Himalayas.
>A row of the holy men sat perched on a rug-draped ledge back in the shadows along a wall
to Ken's right. Each monk had positioned himself on crossed legs and was holding his hands
aloft in front of his upper chest. The fingers of the right hands twisted and entwined with the
fingers of the left, forming intricate arabesques that contorted into sudden manifestation and
then disappeared just as quickly. Murmured mantras buzzed and hummed on the lips of the
gesturing monks.
>Ken felt an odd sense of presence, a summons, and found himself turning to his left to face
the towering statue. From the wreaths of incense smoke that partially concealed the huge
bronze Buddha emerged a single red-robed figure. The young ninja suddenly realized that the
man was walking directly toward him.
>in total shock, he looked into the eyes of the monk who stood before him. There was no
mistaking the twinkle to his eyes and the curl to the edge of his smile.
>"Konnichiwa," said Kozo Matsutani in greeting.
>"This is where you disappeared to! We've been looking all over the plant for you!" scolded
Ken with a frown. "We had no idea where you had gone."
>Kozo lifted his right shoulder to better position the folds of his maroon robe. The tulku did
not seem to notice the edge to the younger man's voice. "I have been waiting here for you. I
knew that you would find this place."
>"What are you doing?" It was a stupid question, but the young agent found the words falling
from his lips nonetheless. The tulku had this effect on him.
>"This is a home of mine. I spent many years here after the escape from Tibet. I was just
getting reacquainted with some helpful ghosts."
>Ken did not know whether the tulku was being facetious. The man was not smiling at all.
>"Why didn't you tell anyone where you were going? You have made many of the team
members very uncomfortable with your disappearance."
>"Why didn't you tell them where I was?"
>"Me?" Ken barked in annoyance. "I had no idea myself."
>"Then how did you find me?"
>"I didn't find you. It was just a coincidence that I happened to come in here."
> Kozo smiled and nodded a quiet "Hmmmm." He then looked into Ken's eyes and stated,
"There is no such thing as 'mere coincidence.' Do not fall into the trap of belittling your own
powers. Of course you knew I was here. That is obvious from the results you produced. There
you are, here I am. You knew."
>Ken was in no mood to argue. Sourly, he turned and looked back
>through the temple toward the door. "Are you going to stay here?"
>"Only until after the evening meal. I have finished my work here for now. There will be
more urgent demands to be faced."
>Annoyed at the man's continuous use of riddles as answers to questions, Ken sighed. "Do
you want to go back with me or not?"
>Kozo's arm shot out and grabbed Ken by the sleeve. "There is much for you to learn in little
time, Ken-chan. Much to learn."
>This enigmatic tulku had the ability to frighten him sometimes. This was one of those times.
With uncharacteristic nervousness, the Hisatsutai ninja declined. "To be truthful, I do not

think I am quite ready for the kind of training that you want me to attempt." Ken smiled
uneasily. "I'm just not cut out to be a monk."
>"I am not talking about religious practice. I am referring to warrior invincibility. The
melding of the body and spirit in the flame of fearlessness. You do not need to think of
yourself as religious at all. You start with your body. That is fine, the proper place to begin,
actually."
>Ken looked down at the wiry tulku with trepidation. He knew that he was about to be
subjected to another of the man's baffling lessons.
>"Fear, or at least nonacceptance, of the human physical body is a principle aspect of many of
the world's major religions. Zen monks and nuns live lives of physical denial, working ever at
overcoming the demands of the body. In America, television ministers have created milliondollar empires based entirely on a fear of human sexuality. Middle Eastern creeds have trained
their believers to see their bodies as unimportant when compared with a heavenly paradise
that awaits the man willing to sacrifice his life in the name of their god. Of course this is all
scandalously perverse, tragic even. We have been given bodies for a sacred purpose. Our
bodies were not designed as a trick to be overthrown.
>"Therefore, the place to begin with a search for the completed powers of the enlightened
warrior is the bones and muscles and juices of the body we were born in."
>Ken nodded. Kozo furrowed his brow. "So much of this is going to sound like boring
common sense. Please see behind the tendency to agree quickly and wait for more. Examine
carefully all that you experience. Take nothing for granted."
>Ken again nodded wordlessly across from the monk warrior in the dim light of the incense
cloud. He would continue to humor the odd little man, though he found himself restless and
agitated as a result of all the responsibility that rode on his shoulders. Something should be
done. Things should be moving by now. Why were they not taking a more aggressive tack
against the deadly threat that lay in wait for them?
>The tulku noticed the energized state of his younger associate. He realized that Ken would
not be able to hear with his intellect as long as lower demands pulled at him. "Stand there," he
ordered abruptly.
>Quizzically, the fatigue-clad ninja looked at the monk.
>"Now just stand there, hands at your sides. Watch me, but do not move."
>The clandestine agent from Kyushu stood in a natural posture and watched uncomfortably as
the elder warrior monk backed off slightly and then moved toward him. The man in the
maroon seemed to levitate across the dirt floor. Of course he was not really levitating, but his
light movements created that impression. Ken noticed that part of his uneasiness was due to
the fact that Kozo was draped in a monk's cowl. He had always worn casual western attire. He
wondered if the clothing change had anything to do with being out of reach of enemies, or
signified his withdrawal from the family's dilemma.
>Kozo stopped directly in front of Ken. He shouted, "Look what you are doing! Your mind is
racing. Spinning in circles. Why?"
>Ken felt like a man who had just been hit by a bucket of ice water. He blinked once and
turned his thoughts inward, thinking about thinking. On second thought, the monk's comment
seemed completely natural. Of course his mind would be working. His profession demanded
constant observation. That is how he had survived as long as he had.
>"First you lose yourself in a maze of rambling thought and then you deny it. Why?
Remember I said not to accept anything that happens as common sense. In the beginning,
none of this has anything to do with common sense, although it will appear to be nothing but."
>Had the man really read his mind? Or had the monk merely set him up with predictable
expectations and just guessed correctly what would naturally float through his mind? Kozo
was staring at him intently now, his head cocked and brow furrowed.

>Kozo suddenly spoke, "Do you think it is possible to read another person's mind?
Remember, I said do not take any of this at its surface value. At this stage, nothing happens
because it is natural." The monk grinned. "It is all still magic at this point."
>Still standing in front of the odd character from Tibet, Ken felt more and more
uncomfortable. His hands felt as though they wanted to move, and yet if he had moved them,
he knew that Kozo would try to read some sort of exaggerated significance into the
movement. His mental and physical frustration compounded itself.
>Kozo whispered, "If I were going to kill you, right now is the moment I would strike."
>Ken was jolted by Matsutani's slap to the face. It had been an open palm slap to the side of
the mouth, stinging infuriatingly and knocking the taller man off balance by turning his head.
But it had produced no real lasting damage.
>The younger agent straightened up slowly, massaging his jaw carefully. He wanted to blast
the monk a good one, holy man or not. Ken stared at the tulku and seethed.
>Kozo had stepped back two easy paces after slapping Ken, to be out of range should the
young man have a more reckless temper than he believed. There was an urgent look that
struggled up from the depths of the older man's eyes. "You have been fortunate to have faced
only lesser men than yourself up to now. You have overcome them because you were superior.
There is great danger in facing a warrior who possesses more power than you, however."
>The red-clad tulku stepped back into position, face to face with Odate. "And I am not talking
about mere bone and muscle power. I mean the power to materialize intentions."
>Ken caught himself at the beginning of a mental 'of course, that is common sense' and froze
his awareness at that point. He could play along. The monk had said not to take any of this as
common sense, and Ken saw how easy a trap his own trained intellect could set for himself.
"What do you mean by 'power to materialize intentions'?" he asked.
>"In the case of a professional assassin, I mean the power to put into your mind the sure
knowledge that you're already defeated before you even move into action. No matter how big
you are, fast you are, or well armed you are, you are dead if you do not get away from me as
quickly as you can."
>Ken felt defensive, argumentative. He did not like hearing this man talk to him like that.
What he could not admit, or even identify, was the certain realization that although this was
just a lecture, the monk's statement was true. He felt intimidated by the man. He could
actually feel that this scrawny monk from the Himalayas could defeat him before he even
made a move.
>jaw tightened against a possible second surprise attack, Ken found himself asking the elder
warrior how one could train for the power of materializing intention. He felt vulnerable and
actually silly standing there like a foolish victim in front of a man who had just struck him for
no reason at all. Common sense told him to back up one step and walk away.
>"I hit you to demonstrate that by allowing a target's mind to build up imaginary realities, it is
possible to take out a highly trained fighter by surprise even though he can see the hit coming
in slow motion. Granted, few would be capable of overcoming one such as you, but those few
are the most important in your life. They are the ones that pose the most danger because they
force you to use methods that you do not fully understand in order to deal with them."
>Ken thought that perhaps he understood the man in front of him. He could not be sure,
however. All of this was so radically different from his usual experience. The young man
continued to stare through the murky veil of incense smoke at the tulku standing before him.
Again he became aware of a wave of uneasiness washing through him from left to right. Like
an awkward adolescent at his fist ballroom dancing lesson, he felt like stretching or moving or
shifting his feet. It was difficult to just stand there.
>"Relax your thought process," offered Kozo in a gentle voice that almost sounded as though
it had come from across the room instead of from directly in front of him. "Just follow the feel

of the muscles that move your ribs as you breathe in and out naturally. Become those muscles
only."
>Ken let go a breath and gently shook his body to relax the muscles. He pulled in a deep
lungful of air and looked down at Kozo.
>There it was again, that fidgeting restless sensation that worked to take over his body. Why
could he not simply relax? Like a child bursting with something to say but ordered to be still,
Ken struggled with the internal turmoil.
>Suddenly he found himself shuffling awkwardly to his right, as though propelled by some
unseen wind that blew in from his left. Embarrassed by the nervous energy that had prevented
him from relaxing, he laughed lightly and looked away from Kozo shaking his head. "I don't
know what is the matter with me today. I am sorry."
>Matsutani continued to stare at him. "No. not at all. You are doing just fine. You got the point
of my lesson."
>"What?"
>"I was mentally counting backward from nine. If you had not moved by zero, I was prepared
to strike your left ribs so hard that it would have folded you in two."
>Ken's brow creased as he regarded the man in the dim light before him.
>"You see, you see, everything begins with the body. There is no way to get around that. The
difficult part for most persons is learning to relax the intellectual chatter long enough to center
their awareness. They never learn to listen to what their body tells them."
>"And it was your intention to break my ribs if I had not moved in time?"
>"Of course. My intention was what your body felt. There is no way to experience that
urgency of body communication without having damaging intentions directed at you." Kozo
lifted his eyebrows. "If I had not intended to damage you, then we would be accomplishing
nothing more than playing a game."
>The Khundor Tulku paused and lifted his chin slightly, pulling in Odate's attention. He
continued, "And with the awesome power of the forces that will soon be confronting you, we
have no time to play games."
>
>Chapter 21
>
> The temperature had plummeted after nightfall, and the clear skies of the day had given in
to a thin cover of stringy clouds. The stars overhead disappeared one by one as the two men
made their way along the mountain path in the darkness.
>"Toru Kitagawa arrived this morning," said Odate, keeping his eyes on the rocky footway
beneath him. A small cloud of breath vapor accompanied his words.
>The tulku beside him remained silent for several moments before speaking. At last he
replied. "I thought my brother had ordered him back to Kumamoto."
>"He did. And Toru chose to ignore the order."
>Matsutani sighed. "Of course you know why he is here."
>"Of course. He did not have to tell anyone. Everyone knows why. He wants personally to
take out whoever shows up as our adversary in this confrontation."
>"Tragically futile, but understandable, I suppose."
>The two moved on through the blackness of the night in silence.
>Kozo the monk led the way through a tight pass in the rock
>
>formation. Ken followed close behind.
>The cloud cover overhead thickened and lowered. An occasional dim rumble sounded far in
the distance now.
>"Are storms like this common here at this time of year?"

> The monk spoke without looking over at his younger protg. "Storms like the one we are
about to encounter are most uncommon. They are usually faced only once in a lifetime."
>Ken sighed quietly in disgust and continued walking. The strange holy man warrior was
doing it again. Once more he was resorting to his infuriating habit of creating mystery out of
the mundane.
>The evening had been a bizarre experience. He and the tulku had been invited to remain for
supper with the Tibetans at the temple. The humble meal had been taken without
conversation, the cavernous dining hall dominated by the haunting echoes of a sutra reader,
who chanted from a holy tome as the others consumed their food in contemplation. The
windowless structure in which they ate had required the use of dozens and dozens of
flickering butter lamps for light. The small unsteady flames had projected overlays of moving
shadows across the walls and high ceiling. The dancing illusions of golden light had created
the effect of a company of ghosts come to join them at the table.
>After the meal, at which Kozo had been treated as a special personage due to his reputation,
the monks had split up into several groups to carry out their evening duties. Ken was surprised
to learn that not all Tibetan monastics are holy men. The red cowl common to all monks is
symbolic of their brotherhood alone, and is not necessarily a token of piety. There were
squabbling monk bakers and cooks, boisterous monk gardeners and herdsmen, haughty monk
accountants, and even a faction of rough and tumble Tibetan monk soldiers and bodyguards,
none of whom conducted themselves at all in what appeared to be a particularly solemn or
holy fashion.
>Ken followed Kozo into the shrine room where he had first met him earlier in the day. The
Matsutani ryu ninja balked at first, fearing that he would profane any ceremony that might
transpire. The tulku reassured the young agent that his presence was welcomed by all, and
guided him to a seat at the edge of the cavelike room.
>Kozo Matsutani, as the eighth Khundor Tulku, reappeared later in a procession of monks
that emerged from behind the massive bronze statue. The tulku then split off from the main
body of holy men and approached an elevated chair draped with lavishly embroidered silk
banners and slipcovers. Ken watched in fascination as the younger brother of the chairman of
the board of directors of Matsutani Shoji, Ltd. climbed into the thronelike piece of furniture
and looked down upon the sea of cross-legged monks sitting on the floor below. A hush
subdued the maroon crowd and then the tulku began to speak.
>Ken, of course, could understand none of the words. He could not even detect the beginning
and ending of sentence structure in the rapid Tibetan dialect employed by the tulku. What he
could discern, however, was the conviction behind Kozo's words, and the effect that the man
had on the crowd of disciples. Kozo was riveting. There was no mistaking that despite the
language barrier.
>In the surrealistic environment of fantasy created by the light and smoke, the elevated tulku
seemed to take on a radiance that glowed along the edges of his shoulders and head. The
young man could have sworn he saw ghostly white flames rise and twist from the torso of the
man upon the throne in front of him. The tulku positioned his hands in front of his chest with
the right hand gripping the upraised index finger of the left. The small body seemed to grow
in height. The man's head rose in front of the statue, and Ken rubbed his eyes and shifted in
his seat to get another and then another perspective on what he knew to be an impossible
phenomenon.
>Though Ken knew it was an impossibility, a contradiction of all the laws of natural science,
he was witnessing Kozo Matsufani in the act of seated-body levitation.
>Perhaps it had been a trick of the erratic lighting in combination with the effects of the dense
clouds of incense. Ken had jumped to his feet in alarm and terror, and moved about the back

of the sanctuary to get a better view. His mind raced and tumbled. What he was seeing could
not be true. It just could not be true.
>From his standing position, it appeared to Ken that Kozo was seated in his throne in the
standard buttocks-on-the-wood fashion. The man still held his hands in the stacked grip, but
was not at all flying about the room. Ken felt silly and embarrassed. He saw that Kozo had
noticed his frantic run across the back of the temple lecture hall.
>Ken Odate had not dared to mention what he had seen.
>
> The clouds in the night sky above them tumbled and twisted now. In the distance, a tiny
vein of lightning stretched down from the grumbling heavens to scratch the side of a far-off
ice-covered peak. The chill wind picked up and Ken buttoned the top button of his gray
fatigue jacket.
>The tulku spoke at last. "The enactment of revenge is, a tempting lure to the grieving,
especially when the grieving person is a professional strong-arm man. The satisfaction of
revenge is fleeting, however. One has destroyed nothing more than the image of the grief that
one fears. The original loneliness and hollowness is still there, no matter how many have been
killed in vengeance."
>"Yes, but isn't there some duty involved there? If a man is capable of ridding the world of
some evil, doesn't he have an obligation to do it?"
>Kozo stopped and looked over at Ken. "Do you really believe that Toru Kitagawa is
motivated by a selflessly benevolent demand for cosmic balance?"
>Ken hesitated and then admitted the obvious with a sigh. "No. No, of course not."
>"Of course not. He is being controlled by his heart's demand for comfort, not by the
universal scheme of totality. For that reason, w are here to protect Toru Kitagawa by
preventing him from encountering that which would surely destroy him." Kozo turned back t
the path and continued on his way through the darkness.
>"Toru Kitagawa is relentless. He won't take no for an answer."
>Kozo thought for awhile. "From the limits of human perspective evil seems to be absolute.
From the cosmic view, however, it could be that our limited viewpoint creates mere illusions
that only see to be absolutes to us. It is a difficult lesson to learn because it mean transcending
the dictates of the heart. That is impossible for many."
>"I understand relativity. But having seen the remains of hi niece, how could Toru believe the
person who did that is anything else but evil?"
>"In the same way that you or I could be seen as something other than evil should we cause
extreme pain to others in the completion of what we feel to be our duties."
>Ken's voice rose slightly. "Why are you defending the actions o this monster?"
>"Because you are clinging to the need for Emi's murderer to be a monster. The woman is
dead. Yours or mine or Toru's attachment to her as a living being will not help at all. She will
not be back in this lifetime. She is gone, no matter whether she was taken out by a disease or a
hatchet. She is gone."
>The path turned down abruptly, taking the two men over a small crest in the rocky stretch
they crossed. A broad valley opened up beneath them, and they could see for miles. There
nestled at the foot of the low peaks that held them lay a cluster of glowing lights. The
Matsutani company's cooperative energy generation facility do ' initiated the hillside and
partially obscured the dwellings and structures of the village that lay beyond.
>The sky had grown increasingly ominous. Angry purple clouds tumbled and crept across the
valley toward them. Occasional flashes of hot white light darted from the underbelly of the
cloud cover like probing snake tongues.

>The two paused and looked down at the energy center. Ground cables and pipelines webbed
out of the plant and ran on out into the blackness beyond. It was like looking out across the set
of a space fantasy adventure film. Nothing at all seemed real.
>Kozo finally turned to Ken. "It is that attachment that causes all the pain, creates all the
wrath. There is no getting around that. The more adamantly we curse the universe for what is,
the more intense the pain. The only escape is in letting go of that which is already gone."
>Ken shook his head. "I suppose I can follow that logic intellectually, but I am not mature
enough to live up to that kind of awareness on an emotional level."
>Ken squinted into the dark wind. "I feel for Toru Kitagawa. I know what he is going through
and I know that even orders from the chairman of the board will not prevent him from getting
what he seeks."
>"You are correct there. My brother's orders will have no effect. There is a grander scheme,
however, that will intervene to prevent my cousin Toru from encountering the danger of
forcing himself on the karma of his niece's killers."
>More riddles to annoy Kenichi Odate. "What do you mean by that?"
>"I mean that Toru will never attain his revenge. He will have to live out the rest of his life
unrelieved of the burden of hatred that he carries now. He will either learn to let it go, or it
will consume him like a cancer. Only time will tell."
>Angered, the young ninja replied, "How do you know that Toru will never have his revenge?
What makes you so sure that he will lose?"
>"No, no. I did not say he would lose. I said that he would never attain his revenge."
>"What do you mean
>"There is no time. It is too late for Toru."
>The tulku grabbed Ken Odate by the sleeve and pulled him over to the side of the path. The
edge dropped away steeply and disappeared into the blackness of the rock formations below.
The holy man crouched into the stiff wind and pointed down toward the energy plant.
>"I mean that if anything is going to happen now, it will be up to us and us alone. Toru can't
help us here."
>Far below them, nestled in a cleft in the rocks above the Matsutani facility, glowed a pool of
yellow light. In the center of the generator-produced illumination were parked two large
freight trucks, each loaded to capacity with large crates of elongated objects. Two men, one of
them apparently quite large, could be seen moving about in the light.
>Matsutani continued to point as he spoke. "Emi Kitagawa's murderers. They have arrived to
do some more killing tonight, it seems.
>Ken stared down at the tiny well of light in the stormy darkness. His voice wavered with
incredulity. "How did you know?"
>"I saw them from the sacred platform in the temple, while I was lecturing. I found myself
moving into the chi ken in hand posturing of Dainichi Nyorai, the cosmic personification of
all-seeing, all-knowing wisdom. You saw me. I made a point of making you see, though I
knew that you would later deny it. From the seat of the ancestors where I took on the vision of
the divine, I could see what lay ahead, what we would be destined to do."
>"What is destined to happen?" Ken asked in all seriousness. "How will this turn out?"
>"I cannot say. I can only see the spirit of what is destined to be, the 'god's eye view.' It is up
to our human actions in the physical world either to bring about that destiny or to fail."
>Ken looked back at the two trucks. He understood now. The deadly gas would be released to
ride the thunderstorm winds down across the energy plant, through the village, into the
collection of monasteries further down the valley, and off over the far-lying ridge to seep into
the settlements beyond. Whether Matsutani Shoji was implicated no longer mattered.
Thousands would be annihilated overnight.

>He reached in reflex to his ankle, where he had strapped his Heckler & Koch 9mm pistol.
The small backup gun felt woefully inadequate in his hand in light of the task that lay ahead.
Ken was painfully aware of the seconds and minutes speeding by. They would have to move
soon, and move decisively.
>Kozo touched Ken's right forearm. "I am afraid that we cannot rely on even that small
additional advantage." He indicated the pistol. "If a flying slug should rip through a body and
hit one of the cylinder valve units, the sudden pressure release would instantly set off all the
other tanks. A slug hitting a fender or the engine block by accident could cause a spark that
would set off an explosion as well. We would then be guilty of mass murder ourselves."
>Ken's heart pounded in his chest as he looked first at the pistol and then back at Kozo. The
ninja agent's face was twisted into an unspoken question in the faint light that made its way up
the mountain from the spotlights below.
>Kozo continued, "A gun is too dangerous this time." The tulku paused and reached into the
wide red sash around his waist. He seemed to be searching for something. Ken watched
intently.
>Kozo Matsutani extracted what appeared to be a small cylindrical object wrapped and tied in
an embroidered gold silk bag. He clutched whatever it was firmly in his right hand. "There is
nothing else for us to use now. We will have to rely on the power of our intentions alone."
>
>Chapter 22
>
>The two Japanese silently descended the hillside through the building storm. The four
trained feet moved like cat's paws over the unseen terrain underfoot, carrying the two
crouched bodies over firm ground while keeping them out of possible sight. Coordinating
breathing with muscle tension and scanning eye movement, the two eased their way forward.
They worked at staying behind the enemy position so as not to risk being exposed between
the lights of the energy plant and the light from the generator on the truck.
>From behind a crusty outcropping of windblown rock the tulku and the ninja stopped and
peered out at their target site.
>The large man was operating a pneumatic lift at the rear of one of the two dirt-blown Sovietbuilt ZIL-151 five-ton cargo trucks marked with red stars. He appeared to be an Oriental. Ken
doubted that he was Japanese, however. The bone structure of the man's face and the set of his
eyes suggested that he was probably Korean. The man was built like a cedar tree. A loose gray
tweed jacket obscured the view so that Ken could not tell whether the big man was armed or
not. A gas mask hung from a shoulder strap.
>Another man, this one a tall and gaunt European, wore at a black crate on the tailgate of the
other truck. He seemed to be attaching rolls of electrical cable that fanned out between him
and the Korean's vehicle. Like the Korean, this man worked with quick and deliberate
movements. They seemed to be in a hurry.
> In a prearranged tactic, Ken slipped through the darkness to the front bumper of the
European's truck. The Matsutani ryu ninja drifted like a phantom. He conformed to the visual
texture of light and shadow projected against the rocks, and blended the timing of his
movements with the ever increasing intensity of the rumbling thunder that twisted the low
clouds overhead.
>In the blackness at the edge of the crescent of light that rimmed the cargo truck's front grille,
the Hisatsutai agent worked the toes and balls of his feet into the loose soil to prepare his
charge. He began the rhythmic breathing pattern that would coordinate his exhalations with
muscle extensions. In order to reaffirm the purpose of his actions, he began to create in his
mind the image of the tall European tumbling to the ground with his neck broken, seeing the
attack from future view as having been swift, successful, and final.

>Something was wrong. Ken felt slightly ill at ease and found himself frozen in place, unable
to move. Slowly, gradually, from the underside of his mind, he recognized that he was
undergoing the same feeling he had experienced earlier that day in the Tibetan temple. This
time however, the effect was in reverse. During the afternoon, Ken could not hold still under
the unspoken pressure of the potential attack. Now he could not make his body move at all.
>He wrestled with his discomfort and then like a light piercing through a darkened room, he
suddenly realized what had made him so uneasy. There seemed to be no security scouts in the
area. That was most unusual for a terrorist attack of this magnitude. The two men seemed to
be operating fully in the open, without the benefit of any visible scanner or lookout. That kind
of lapse was highly unprofessional, not at all up to the standards that they had faced so far in
this challenge.
>There must be an unseen sniper out there somewhere, he realized, lurking out of sight just
waiting for any intruder to show himself.
>The ninja from Kyushu considered his options. In a matter of seconds, Kozo would hurl a
fist-sized rock across the lighted expanse to tumble down the slope across from their position.
During the distraction, Ken was supposed to leap out and finish the European. From there, he
would move around the front of the second truck and take out the Korean with his singleedged tanto utility knife.
>
>Ken's inner sense of impending danger told him that their previous plan was no longer
applicable now. He would have to improvise.
>Silently lowering himself to flatten out on his stomach, Ken slithered from the shadows into
position beneath the vehicle's drive train, keeping his eyes locked on the target ahead of him.
Exposed in the light from behind, the European's two legs extended down from the overhang
of the truck's rear bumper.
>The, night-purple thunderheads and their erratic lightning had drifted closer to the clearing
that sheltered the two trucks. The first few drops of rain had begun to fall by the time Kozo
Matsutani reached the lower stretches of the shadows' cover of darkness. He watched the huge
hulking form of the Korean as he manhandled the cylinder crates into position for what must
have been a connection alignment with the European's black box. Both of the enemy workers
seemed totally absorbed in their tasks. Neither seemed to suspect that they were about to be
attacked.
>Kozo bent and picked up a palm-sized flat rock from beside his right foot. He cocked his
arm and propelled the spiraling stone arcing over the lighted area to clatter down the face of
the hillside across from him.
>The massive Oriental in the gray tweed jacket spun in the direction of the sound.
>Ken grabbed the European by the ankles and jerked toward himself violently. Zhelyo
Karushilev's rising shins splintered forward on impact with the steel bumper of the ZIL-151,
flinging his torso to the ground seat first. As soon as the back of the lanky Bulgarian assassin's
head cracked against the rocks beneath him, he was dragged beneath the engine compartment
of the truck. The man had been toppled and pulled under to have his throat cut open before he
had a chance to scream in alarm.
>Ken lay next to the limp form and watched the running feet of the Korean. The rain was
picking up. Ken noted that the dead man wore an airtight jumpsuit that would have protected
him from the release of phosgene gas. These men were prepared to let loose the gas and watch
its effects.
>
> Il Nam Kwon grabbed the spotlight tripod and whirled it in an arc to point its searing white
beam into the darkness across from where the stone had clattered. A shaggy haired wiry monk
in maroon robes stood pinned in the center of the beam.

>Kwon the assassin, well protected behind bulletproof body panels under his coat, let go a
roaring laugh. He steadied the overhead light and stared across the illuminated clearing
toward the cowering monk. He knew the concealed Orosov had a clear target in his sights.
>Two shots rang out, but were quickly drowned by the pouring rain. The figure trapped in the
spotlight disappeared, thrown back by the impact of the bullets. Kwon heard a stifled curse
behind him and spun the spotlight onto the truck under which the ninja lay.
>The North Korean assassin saw only shadows under the Russian disguised truck, but he
sensed the ninja's presence. Karushilev was missing, so it only made sense that his killer was
close by, and most likely under the vehicle. He played the harsh beam directly below the truck
where he could barely make out two distinct shapes. Keeping his body aligned with the other
truck and its deadly cargo, Kwon moved away from the light and toward the truck. If the ninja
was armed with sense as well as a gun, he would not chance shooting Kwon and hitting a gas
canister instead or on ricochet.
>The hulking assassin considered removing the Makarov from its chamois holster under his
left arm, but stopped. He wore body armor and heavy clothing, perhaps enough insulation
against skin contact with the phosgene gas. He also had his gas mask; however, he would not
push it. He felt certain the ninja was alone, the final barrier to completing his mission of mass
murder.
>
>The spotlight was dazzling. Ken could not see the massive form of the North Korean, but
sensed its presence moving slowly, carefully away from the source of light and toward his
truck. If he tried to get out from under the truck, he would be seen for sure and any advantage
in a fight would be lost. If he went to the dark side of the truck, there was the chance the
North Korean would don his gas mask and attempt to release the gas. He could also have a
gun.
>Ken was still reeling from the heart-breaking image of the tulku shot down in plain sight.
Hadn't he sensed the presence of a sniper?
>Lightning illuminated the jagged peaks surrounding their valley.
>
>Thunder rumbled across the range in a crashing crest, then grew fainter as it rolled on. Ken
struggled to focus his scattered senses upon Kwon and they quickly encountered not so much
a visual image but an aura of malignant evil. Still blinded by the light, Ken nevertheless "saw"
a silhouette of a huge black bear on the periphery of the searing white beam. A reddish gray
"halo" fringed this felt image of animated hatred. Ken felt demons stirring in him uneasily, as
if attracted to the creature that stalked him.
>Kwon was perhaps six meters away, moving slowly on the rain slicked snow. Was Ken's
perception of having already lost a reality or his imagination? How much did the monster
know?
>In the hours that seemed to have elapsed since the tulku had gone down, Ken had slowly
coiled his legs against the inside of the front tire of the truck and carefully reached into his
black silk pouch. Rejecting the finely honed senban shuriken as just as dangerous as bullets,
Ken fondled a packet of metsubushi, a mixture of sand and steel filings and considered its
effectiveness in the downpour. On one end of the small canister was a wire tab, which when
pulled would cause the blinding powder to discharge from the opposite end.
>The sound of the rain filled his ears like cotton, threatening to numb all his other senses with
its relentless drumming on the truck and its canvas canopy. The rage he had felt at the death of
his newfound mentor, the grinning bony monk, was waxing, but a great emptiness arose to
menace his aggressive energies. A subconscious countdown had begun within the ninja even
as his conscious levels stormed with demons seemingly summoned by the North Korean's evil
presence.

>Husky demon voices barked in his imagination, taunting him and goading him on. Evil black
shapes loomed before him in his mind's sight. The countdown wound down far within him.
>Ken exploded into action, popping the metsubushi packet at the shadow's head as he leaped
out from beneath the truck. With the back of one great arm the monstrous assassin batted
away the contents of the packet, which formed a cloud of black and gray dust. With the other
massive limb, the wiry ninja was brushed aside with ease as the rain quickly washed the
metsubushi from the air. Ken tried to roll away from Kwon, but was kicked in the small of the
back and the shock of it rattled violently up his spin. He did several meters in the snow. The
rain battered down upon the ninja as he struggled to his feet and crouched.
> He had not realized the extent of the storm that had awaited him from under the truck.
Thunder and lightning pealed and flashed several times as the North Korean began to circle
him. The energy of Ken's attack had flared and had been snuffed out effortlessly by his
massive opponent. Surrounded by the forlorn mountains of the Himalayas and a baleful storm,
Ken remembered Kozo's warning. The tulku had told him that a time would come when he
would face a superior foe. That time was now.
>
>Chapter 23
>
>Kwon had had no sense of the ninja until he had burst from beneath the truck. He had even
considered the possibility that Karushilev had perhaps taken out the ninja as his own life was
snuffed out. As it was, Kwon acknowledged wordlessly that the Japanese had employed a
clever tactic, and had executed it with great power of determination. Kwon had barely been
able to fend off the tall thin Japanese on reflex and brute strength alone. As he circled the
gray-clad ninja in the rain, the Korean assassin knew he faced an intense and potentially
savage foe. Kwon knew that without his body armor, he would have had a difficult time
dealing with this one. With his present advantage considered, however, the so-called phantom
warrior was doomed.
> The hulking Kwon purposely let down his guard to tempt the ninja into an attack. In concert
with a rip of lightning that split the sky, the ninja flew at the North Korean with a barrage of
fudoken fore fist punches to the big man's solar plexus. Kwon felt the strikes through the
thickness of his Kevlar mesh armor, but was not moved in the slightest. When the ninja
followed with a right heel stamp kick to the hip, the burly assassin slipped to the inside of the
moving leg and smashed his left fist into his foe's stomach. Before Kwon could execute a
follow-up wheel kick to the head, however, the ninja twisted, dived to the ground, and rolled
out of range.
> Barely winded, the North Korean wiped the rain from his eyes and crouched. He knew that
the ninja would have to change tactics and go for his arms and legs since his torso had proven
to be nearly invulnerable. His own strategy would be to let the young Japanese wear himself
out on the offensive. Kwon contemplated the possible value of keeping the Japanese killer
alive. Perhaps there could be some profit for the People's cause to take him prisoner and
blackmail a major Japanese corporation. He angrily wished that he had had the time to
research the Matsutani corporate holdings and list of clients. He had told no one, not even
Huang Fei, about his discovery of the ninja and their connection to Matsutani Shoji, Ltd.
>Ken Odate pulled the thick-bladed tanto from its concealed sheath and gripped the weapon
across his right palm in reverse fashion. Kwon smiled in bitter derision at what he considered
to be a meager and futile attempt to even the odds. He resolved to kill the Japanese, and he
would do it with his enemy's own knife if that is what it would take.
>Lips still pulled back in the mocking sneer, the mammoth Korean flexed at the knees and
lowered his right hand to the hard packed ground beneath his feet. Continuing to stare right at

his adversary, Kwon used his fingernails to scratch at the edges of the partially buried rocks
beside him.
>It suddenly dawned on Ken Odate just exactly what the killer across from him was doing.
The ninja flew at Kwon blade first before the smirking assassin could loosen a rock and hurl it
at him.
>Il Nam Kwon sidestepped the charge, deliberately permitting the knife blade to hit his
armored chest. The knife snagged in the layers of bulletproof webbing and Kwon slammed his
right arm down on the ninja's weapon arm while bringing his left up into position for a fatal
rib-crushing bear hug. The ninja twisted with the arm-lift, however, and managed to wriggle
out of death's grasp. His knife, now far out of reach, skittering out and away from him toward
the truck cab to his right, Odate dropped into a low crouch and blasted forward with a string
of stabbing boshiken thumb tip strikes into the sensitive inner surface of the North Korean's
left leg.
>Kwon reflexively lifted his leg away from the excruciating pain, slipped, staggered, and fell;
grabbing and carrying the ninja with him in an attempt to crush the gray-clad Japanese under
his body weight. The snowy ground was slick, however, and the nimble fighter from
Kumamoto shot out from under his massive adversary. Both men quickly scrambled for a
foothold on the cold wetness of the mud and rock underfoot, breath panting from each of them
in little blasts of vapor which were in turn swallowed up by the relentless downpour.
>Odate moved in light erratic backward shuffles in front of Kwon. The ninja kept his body in
a defensive posture with his right side forward, his right foot and extended right arm pointing
out to intercept any advance from his murderous enemy. In contrast to the ninja's fluidity and
suppleness, Kwon assumed a firmly rooted horseback posture, his thighs bowed widely and
his feet gripped the ground solidly. The ninja moved and shifted position like waves lapping
forward and back against a seashore. The North Korean assassin moved in tight powerful
bursts of sideways footwork like a crab prowling the oceans edge.
>The two clashed in a flurry of blows, parries, counterthrusts, and counterblocks. Kwon used
his powerful limbs to dominate and position the lighter Odate. Backing the ninja towards the
parked truck, he worked at cutting off any possible avenue of retreat that might be taken by
his smaller opponent. The ninja, in turn, used the weight of his body mass in motion to
generate sufficient power to prevent being overwhelmed.
>The rain had begun to let up, and the violent sounds from the twisting clouds overhead were
beginning to dim. Kwon noticed his own growing concern over losing the opportunity that the
storm winds would afford his plans. He was also aware of the distinct possibility that
reinforcements from the Matsutani plant could have been summoned by an unseen enemy
team member.
>When the ninja was backed up against the dull brown door of the truck, Kwon cocked his
right fist back beside his ribs and charged like a bull, screaming and cursing in his native
tongue. Ken Odate took the bait and tumbled sideways in a roll away from the North Korean's
path. With an incredible agility belied by his size and mass, the hulking assassin altered his
course on the slippery ground and scooped up the gray-clad Matsutani agent. As Kwon
worked at wrenching his foe's arm into a shoulder-destroying twist, the ninja spun with the
pressure. The big man released the gray and silver blur and kicked out with a sideways thrust
from his left leg. Odate's body took the jarring hit and flew backward to smash against the
fender of the truck.
> Kwon became aware of a growing sensation of pain that spread along his left arm. He
looked down to see the hilt of the tanto jutting obscenely from his biceps, the blade
completely buried in the flesh of his massive limb and the point of the knife wedged firmly
into the underlying bone. Stunned and then infuriated, the professional killer realized that the

Japanese must have somehow been able to retrieve the discarded knife from the ground
beneath the truck cab as he rolled away from Kwon's lunging punch.
>His rage building and his paralyzed left arm now dangling uselessly at his side, Kwon
staggered toward his downed enemy. The maddened assassin reached inside his coat and
withdrew the Makarov 9mm pistol, his red-rimmed eyes never leaving the crumpled form of
the semi-conscious ninja. The rain had ceased, but Kwon could see that it would resume again
in just a few minutes. He was thoroughly soaked and could feel the cold bite into him. The
specter of his death had never come this close before. Perhaps the ninja's death would bring
him warmth.
>Though the rain and its thunder and lightning had stopped, somehow a forboding rumble had
come from seemingly nowhere, rolling across the surrounding mountain peaks, gaining
savage intensity and blending the unholy wail of a thousand banshees with the thunderous
growl of bass echoes. As the howl reached its crescendo, Kwon recognized an eerie human
quality to the sound and the roar of power became a soul-shrivelling shriek of righteous rage.
>The big man recoiled and turned in bewilderment as the spotlight tripod behind him rattled,
toppled, and crashed to the ground. The hot sheet metal of the lamp casing hissed wildly in
the wet snow and a cloud of steam billowed upward. The beam reached out and up from the
ground, off and away from Il Nam Kwon and his slumped victim, and angled unnaturally into
the darkness from which the howling wail had emanated.
>There in the shaft of light, framed perfectly in the stark whiteness of the beam from below,
stood the little wisp of a monk in his tattered maroon cowl. Eyes ablaze, somehow back from
the dead, it was the same man to whom the fallen ninja had previously cried out "Tulku!"
>From his position high up on the rocky overhang, Sergei Orosov had narrowed his left eye
and concentrated with his right on the image that came into focus in the magnifying lenses of
the scope atop his 7.62mm Dragunov sniper's rifle. He had turned on the infrared detector
switch in the telescopic sight mount of the PSOI scope, set the range drum at 4, and aligned
the reticle on the redorange glow that seemed to pulsate from a scraggily bush where the little
monk had toppled. With a satisfied smile playing on his lips, the Bulgarian hitman had
scanned the area for a corpse. The monk had gone down with the shot, and Orosov wanted to
be certain.
>Orosov had assumed that Kwon had his reasons for turning the spotlight away when he had
shot the strange little monk, and the sniper had known better than to leave his position. He had
a clear view of most of their camp, at least the most likely approaches to it. He would resume
scanning those approaches once he ascertained the status of his kill. The lightning and thunder
had moved in quite close, however, and he became restless in his vulnerability to the storm
high up on his prominent outcrop of rock and snow.
>The Bulgarian had carried out a mentally devised quadrant-by-quadrant scan of the vicinity
of his hit, holding the sight steady along a line, lowering it, and swinging back on a lower
line. There had been a flutter of orange-red and he had swung the deadly rifle in its direction.
Before he could catch sight of what had made the movement, he heard some rocks shift and
rattle down the slope above him to his left.
> He had stood and swung the rifle up toward the sound. He used the night sight but saw
nothing. Then the rain had begun in earnest and he huddled back under his white poncho. In
the uneventful minutes that passed, Orosov began to doubt the case with which he had
dispatched the mysterious cowled figure.
>The first wave of the storm had died down, but Orosov could not shake his sense that
something was out there. Lightning suddenly Illuminated what he had thought was the
maroon-clad figure. The form had been standing, arms outstretched. Quickly adjusting the
PSO-1 once again, he could see the monk. He squeezed off two more shots and the cloak flew

off to reveal a tall thin mound of snow with branches jutting out at shoulder level. Orosov had
not been amused.
>When the monk materialized out of a snow-covered pit, it became clear to the Bulgarian
sniper that the eerie specter in his sights had been toying with him. To Orosov's surprise, the
monk had turned his head to stare directly into the lens of the scope bearing down on him. He
was looking the monastic right in the eyes. The Bulgarian's smile had widened as he centered
the Dragunov on its target and slowly squeezed the trigger.
> There had followed a muffled snap! and the sound of metal tinkling onto the rock surface
under the firing mechanism of the Dragunov. Baffled, Orosov had fished with his finger in the
empty space of the trigger guard. Incredulous, Sergei Orosov suddenly realized there was no
trigger. The curved piece of steel had somehow broken off at its base and tumbled to the rock
below. The timing had been impossible. Pure fear had begun to take hold of the Bulgarian
terrorist.
>The monk had grinned up at him through the telescopic sight. He nodded and grinned just
like he knew what had happened.
> Sergei Orosov gave out an unconscious yelp of terror as he recoiled from the sight in the
telescopic lens. The horror grew out of proportion until he was no longer in control of his
quaking body. As he shuffled back and up, he haplessly dislodged himself from his seat on the
overhanging ledge to skitter sideways and downward in a shower of loose rocks. The
Bulgarian's hysterical screams were lost in the storm, and once the rock slide had subsided, an
eerie silence fell on the valley.
> From the hollow of that silence had emerged the unholy roar that had diverted the
murderous intent of the wounded Il Nam Kwon.
>
> The North Korean snapped his head to the side to look up into the darkness at the general
area that sheltered Sergei Orosov. The Korean could hear echoes of a scream and the rumble
of the falling rock fragments, but these sounds were within his head and seemed to have no
connection to the present.
> Kwon looked back at the monk and roared in animal challenge. There was no reply except
the echo of his own bass tones bouncing back to him in emptiness. Thunder tolled mockingly
in the distance. Kwon knew he was alone now.
> Kozo Matsutani returned the stare of the huge man who stalked him. The monk in the rainsoaked robe clutched a tattered gold silk bag in his left hand and slowly raised his empty right
hand. A boom of thunder crashed to his right and a skeleton arm of lightning reached
downward, but the holy man never flinched.
>Il Nam Kwon stopped in his tracks and stared at the monk in disgust. The little man was
waving his hand in some sort of blessing. The little weepy-eyed bastard was blessing him!
>Kwon was filled with revulsion and contempt. He hated the monk and all he stood for. For
all the useless effort in running around inside their dingy, smoke-filled, artificial worlds;
murmuring prayers to imaginary spiritual dictators; neglecting the realities of productivity and
sacrifice, to indulge themselves in holy foolishness-,these self-righteous parasites deserved to
be eradicated, every one of them.
>The North Korean assassin squinted through the rain to look Kozo in the eyes. He wanted
the man in the maroon robes to fully understand what was going to happen. He would be
killed by a piece of scalding metal that would rip through his heart. He wanted the man to feel
the terror of death. He wanted this damnable religious relic to recognize for once in his life
that power is ultimate, and that no amount of sanctimoniousness would ever make up for the
lack of worthwhile living.
>The monk looked back at him with peace in his eyes. Peace despite the end of it all,
thought Kwon with disdain.

>The Korean's mind suddenly flashed back to a startlingly clear remembrance of his
grandfather. That was who the monk reminded him of, Il Nam Kwon thought. He was the
-very image of his mother's father. He had those same eyes. He was built the same, and had
always displayed that same silly little grin. Run ragged and humiliated for decades by the
Japanese Imperial occupational forces, the foolish old man had not lifted so much as a finger
to free his family from the bondage of the Imperialists. Garbed in his traditional Korean black
stovepipe cap and billowing white cloak, the family grandfather had lived in his own world of
ghost stories and children's games.
>Il Nam Kwon had not seen his grandfather since the age of nine, and had rarely ever thought
about the man since. He wondered how it was that he had come to think of him at an odd time
like this. Kwon looked at the monk again and once more recalled his mother's aged father.
Somehow, against his will, he found himself remembering how the old man used to tickle
him. It would start out as wrestling and end up as tickling.
>Kwon had been skinny as a child, amazing in light of his eventual adult size, and had so
easily collapsed in hysterical laughter under the probing, wriggling fingers of his grandfather.
The old man had taught him how to fish, and had let him smoke his pipe now and then, when
none of the other adults were looking.
>It was a family tradition for his grandfather to take the children down to the Hamhung
market square for the Tano Day celebrations on the fifth day of the fifth moon. The crowds
would pack in around the girls in their multicolored gowns as they stood on wooden planks
attached to the ends of two long ropes. Kwon remembered the swings and how the girls used
to fly high over the heads of the crowd,' laughing and shrieking in glee.
>He suddenly remembered the first time he had seen his sister step up onto the swing and sail
off in great rushing sweeps. He had not understood and had begun to cry. He was so afraid
that the people who made her get on the swing would hurt her.
>He cried and reached out and his mother had picked him up and twirled him around in her
arms to bring him from tears to laughter again. She squeezed him and sang sweetly in the tiny
cup of his ear and there was his sister on the ground again, safe at last. He ran to her and she
too hugged his little body fast to hers. II Nam Kwon remembered the scent of her, and
remembered the feel of her hair as it stuck to the smeared tears on his cheek.
>The huge North Korean was stunned and shaken by the vividness of the long forgotten
images that had emerged from nowhere to haunt him. It terrified him to think that he still
carried around the restless ghost of the little one that he had once been so long ago. Had it
really been another lifetime altogether? What had become of all those arms that had once
hugged him to keep away the cold edge of fear? Of loneliness. Did that sister still live, the one
who had soared so high on a swing on Tano Day in Hamhung, and did she ever go on to have
any little ones of her own? And where were his little ones, the ones that he could carry to the
market square on Tano day?
>A clap of thunder startled Il Nam Kwon. He was standing among snow-peaked mountains.
He was wringing wet and held a pistol in his right hand. Why did the light look so strange? It
was night and there was some sort of spotlight behind him to the right. He could see his
shadow. Through the rain--or were those tears in his eyes?--he could see someone standing in
front of him. It was an indistinct figure. Those were tears. Tears!
>Kwon moved his right wrist across his eyes to clear his vision when his left arm wouldn't
respond. A strange little man faced him. Much closer than before.
>He could see the man staring back at him. The man was smiling. He looked so happy and
peaceful. He was glowing. The little man in maroon was glowing with a white halo around his
shoulders. Kwon had never seen anything like that before. The man was stepping forward. He
was saying something but Kwon could not hear him. The man was chanting. He held out his
hand. Kwon tentatively lifted his left hand in return. He tried to reach but there was pain. He

was confused. What was going on? He tried to reach once again, this time his right hand. He
strained to lift his arm and extend it toward the little man in maroon. He was shocked to see
that a gun was loosely held in his hand.
>Another boom of thunder and a burst of lightning startled Kwon. The big man bellowed in
terror and bewilderment, and staggered back a step. He shook his head roughly and stared
back at the monk. The smile began to dim as the monk seemingly sensed the change taking
place in Kwon's heart. The North Korean narrowed his eyes and the brightness faded from his
pupils. The monk saw darkness fill the man's aura once again. His hypnotic attempt had failed
and he felt sorrow for the hulking assassin. Kwon had become the reptilian killer once again.
>Il Nam Kwon remembered everything now. The monk had somehow tried to deceive him,
and had almost succeeded. His anger magnified to the point of rage, the Korean assassin
jerked the Makarov to alignment with Matsutani's forehead and squeezed the trigger at pointblank range.
>The explosive roar shook the walls of the valley, and the searing intensity of the light sent
mile-long shadows racing everywhere.
>
>Kenichi Odate screamed again and again in gut-wrenching horror. His mind rocked and
twisted with the overload of the scene that had played itself out before him. He had regained
consciousness full of pain, shivering wet, lying against the fender of the truck.
> In all the years he had spent taking lives and running one step ahead of all those who would
have taken his life, the young ninja had never witnessed anything so horrible and ghastly as
the death of the North Korean.
> The big man had confronted the monk for several silent minutes. He had stood just out of
reach, tottering on his feet. Kozo had begun to radiate a form of light, a brightness that
scattered and glimmered in all colors through the natural prisms of the falling raindrops. The
light had gone on to take the form of a larger human-like shape that had loomed up all around
the maroon-clad tulku.
> The light energy had eventually swelled to the point of reaching the Korean. It played at the
edges of what Ken had been able to perceive as a darkness, a quality of negative light, that
had boiled around the huge assassin. It dimly reminded him of his earlier sense of the hulking
killer, when blinded by the spotlight he had "seen" a black silhouette in the shape of a bear.
Kwon's negative aura had begun to subside. It had vanished for a moment or two and then
there had been a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning that had brought a hint of the
darkness back.
> Kozo had seemed a powerhouse, radiating even more golden white light and reaching out
with his hand. He held a short golden wand that he had pulled out of a silk bag. His aura grew
and then there was another clap of thunder and the Korean had seemed to disappear in a black
howling whirlwind.
> Ken had seen the assassin's gun fly up, taking deadly aim as Kozo held the wand aloft and
then the lightning hit. The wicked twist of raw electrical energy had ripped through the
darkness to grip the Korean by the forehead and then skitter down the inside of his spine.
First, his head split apart, then the man's huge body had exploded. Organs and tissues and
limbs had blown apart and flown through the air, and the remains of the broiled carcass had
toppled over onto the ground to lie smoldering and smoking in the subsiding rain.
> Ken had looked up to see Kozo Matsutani snarling across the clearing at him. The monk
had been growling and his eyes bored right into Ken's to grasp his very soul with talons of ice.
The ninja felt as though he had been invaded by all the evil on earth.
>Kozo was no more. The monk's pristine aura was gone, and in its place loomed a towering
dark specter with red-within-yellow glowing eyes. A wreath of ghostly flames danced around

the hideous visage, and a garland of skulls was draped around its neck. The fearsome thing
roared and the earth shook and Ken slipped back into unconsciousness.
>
>
>
>
>Chapter 24
>
>Noriko escorted Field Project Operations director Teruo Ozawa into the office of board
chairman Hitoshi Matsutani. Ken Odate was already seated on a couch in the conference pit.
Both men wore dark blue business suits and white shirts. Ozawa wore a crimson necktie and
Odate wore a silver one.
>"Ohayo gozaimas, " bowed the younger man. "The chairman will be here in a few minutes."
>Ozawa took a seat across from the Hisatsutai agent and placed his black briefcase on the
carpet beside the couch. Behind the younger ninja's shoulders, the ninth floor roof garden of
the Kumamoto headquarters of Matsutani Shoji Ltd. glowed in the sunlight beyond. The
miniature maples had turned to reds and purples, and the pines glistened under the water
droplets that remained from the recent morning spraying.
>Neither man spoke. Ozawa seemed absorbed in thought. Odate wandered the office with his
eyes. His position in the conference area provided a direct line of sight over to the traditional
alcove with its vase, sword, and scroll. After the ten thousandth triumph, yet a beginner, Ken
Odate read from Kozo Matsutani's shodo once again. The brushed symbols for the words had
a new and heart piercing meaning for him now.
>The double doors opened and Hitoshi Matsutani walked into the office. He was dressed in a
light gray double-breasted suit with a black silk tie, and carried a folded file stuffed with
papers. "Ohayo," he greeted his two subordinates.
>The two men stood and bowed as Hitoshi joined them in the conference pit. He took a seat
on a red leather couch.
>"What do we have?" asked the senior member.
>Ozawa lifted his briefcase and adjusted the snap latches that would give him access to the
contents without triggering the tear gas security system built into the side panels of the case.
He produced several sheets of light blue paper, which he handed to Matsutani.
>"It seems to have been a political extortion attempt by a renegade Chinese army officer.
Apparently Beijing was kept totally in the dark about all of this."
>Hitoshi scanned the top sheet. He nodded and looked up. "This Huang Fei, is that the Red
Chinese military man?"
>"Yes, according to what we have uncovered so far. There is also a Lin Fuzhi implicated in
this, but we are not sure yet just what his role was. More information is coming in all the time
now."
>Matsutani nodded and studied the sheets in front of him. He looked up at Odate. "You saw
no evidence at all of communist Chinese personnel in the area of the energy plant site?"
>"No sir. just the three men that we reported, and the trucks. They were Russian-made
Chinese military vehicles covered with a water soluble paint to pass as Soviet Army."
>"Where did all this information come from?"
>Ozawa replied, "One of the three terrorists survived. He took a pretty bad fall, broke some
major bones." Ozawa paused and looked down at the paper in his hand. "Orosov, his name is.
Sergel Orosov."
>"Did you have anything on him before this?"

>"Oh yes. Pretty wretched character; done a lot of damage around the world. He has never
come up against us, but the western governments have been after him for a long time. He is
quite a trophy."
>"Good, good," nodded Hitoshi. "Maybe we can trade him for access to something that we
need."
>"He's in rough shape. Very rough shape."
>"Oh? Then how did you manage to get this much information out of him?"
>Ozawa paused and looked his superior in the eye. "We gave him to Toru Kitagawa."
>Matsutani grimaced and looked away. The board chairman knew that there would not be
much left to trade when the tengu got through with the man responsible for abducting his
beloved niece.
>"And my brother Kozo? Did he really decide to stay in the Himalayas?"
>Ozawa knew that this was a delicate area. "Yes. He said he has much more to learn, and that
he had only broken the silence of what he called his haji, his shame, because he knew that
only he could assist the family he felt he had betrayed so long ago."
>Odate watched silently as the elder Matsutani nodded and looked out through the window.
The company chairman seemed lost in thought. Ken looked back at the scroll that Kozo had
brushed over forty years ago and worked at keeping his own emotions under control.
>Hitoshi at last turned to his two ninja. "I suppose I knew that from the beginning. He told me
as much those nights he spent at my home. 'Think of your younger brother Kozo as being long
dead and lost,' he said."
>He clasped his hands together and drew in a full and deep breath. "There is so much to life
that we can only guess at, isn't there? There is no way to know, so we can only guess. I only
hope he is happy. He deserves that much."
>In finality, working to change the subject to one with less emotional potential, Hitoshi
Matsutani returned to the sheets in his lap. "We do have much to clean up here, but at least we
can put this part to rest. What do you have in store for this Huang Fei character?"
>Teruo Ozawa leaned forward conspiratorially and Ken Odate allowed his attention to drift.
That part of the plan did not involve him. He had done his part. He had his own future to face
at this point.
>His eyes caught the scroll and its admonition once again. After the ten thousandth triumph,
yet a beginner. He remembered his last encounter with the perplexing tulku who was part
warrior and part holy man and yet fully neither. Ken caught himself smiling. Maybe he was
fully both.
>
> Ken had regained consciousness looking up into the face of Kozo Matsutani. The blackness
of the night sky spattered with millions of gleaming and twinkling stars framed the tulku from
behind. The rain and storm clouds had totally vanished.
>He had struggled to sort out dream from reality. How much had actually transpired and how
much had been the workings of his susceptible mind? He had started to speak out, to question,
but Kozo had silenced him before he began.
>"You have been exposed to much," the tulku began, "in such a short time. There is no easy
way for me to explain it all at this point.
>"Suffice it to say that evil exists only because good exists. Without the balance, there would
be no experience to life, perhaps any life at all as we know it. Great good is only required
when there is the presence of great evil. Does this make sense?"
>Ken had stared up blankly. No, it did not explain ...
>The kneeling monk shifted slightly as he assisted Ken to a sitting position. "The concepts of
good and evil are very difficult to pinpoint objectively. From the perspective of karmic
balance, or the perfect neutralization of all positive and negative influences in one's make-up,

dealing with negative karma produces negative karma. One becomes a little bit of all that one
encounters, good or bad. It cannot be helped."
>"That image, the blackness that surrounded you, where ... ?"
>Kozo cut him off. "I cannot know what you saw. That is your own experience. just bear in
mind that sometimes the positive flow of the universe, what we call the scheme of totality, is
required to assume many startling forms to bring all that was meant to be into alignment.
There is a savage side to that power of completeness, perhaps in the way that the straggling
child experiences only fear and frustration when confronted by loving parental discipline."
> In his right hand, the tulku held the brass vajra thunderbolt wand that had been given to him
by his spiritual brother, the twelfth Gyelsop Lama. The aged and worn ritual implement flared
out to form a crown of four hawk's talons on each end, and served to remind the tulku of all
the power and insight that he had yet to accumulate. He lifted the wand and gripped it firmly.
"There is much karma, much to balance, added to my life's footsteps as of this night. It is as
though all the positive work done over all the decades before tonight were erased completely
in those few moments of confrontation. I must now begin all over again this very minute."
> Kozo sighed and smiled a weary smile, a smile for all the centuries and lifetimes of a soul
wandering through the enigma of existence. "But then that is the challenge of the warrior
path, eh, Ken-chan? Ever onward with the quest, ever more to accomplish, never quite
finished in the search for the true compassion of all-piercing wisdom."
> Ken Odate looked across at the man who sat in the mud in front of him. "After the ten
thousandth triumph, yet a beginner," Ken recited with one raised eyebrow.
> Kozo's initial startled look turned into one of mirth. He laughed aloud a hearty gut-shaking
laugh that echoed like chimes throughout the Himalayas. Yes, oh yes, my friend Kenichi. Yet
a beginner. Forever yet a beginner. And isn't life grand that way?" he spoke. "We come into
life all laughter and tears and over the years we slowly learn to rise above the waves of
attachment and repulsion only to discover one fine day the advanced and holy cosmic truth
that it is indeed all laughter and tears, and therein lies the power. Therein lies the salvation.
Therein lies the hope for the attainment of the very mind and eyes of the divine itself."
> "Where will you go?" asked Odate.
> "Onward," shrugged Kozo Matsutani. "Onward to what has ever eluded me."
> The tulku stood up and extended his hand to the young man on the ground. Ken reached up
and took the hand. The grip was warm and firm and the ninja flew to his feet.
> "And where will you go," asked Kozo Matsutani.
>Ken grinned. "Onward. Onward to what...... He stammered a moment. "I have no idea at all
to what," he laughed.
> Kozo's smile radiated out to touch Ken's heart. "Well, you have a good trip."
> The tulku stood there smiling and Ken knew it felt so wonderful just to be in this special
man's gaze. It was a feeling he would cherish for a lifetime.
> Ken broke the silence finally. "Maybe I will follow after you. You put on a good show."
> The tulku was still smiling and he laughed with a dark little chuckle. "Oh you will follow
after me. You definitely will follow after me. That is your inescapable karma, I'm afraid."
>Ken was taken aback by the man's response to what he had meant as a harmless little joke.
Well, he thought it had been a joke.
>Kozo held the Tibetan thunderbolt in both hands in front of his chest. "We are, however, not
quite ready for each other yet. Give it some time. You need to understand why it is that you
will eventually feel compelled to earn this." The monk held up the vajra wand. "It is yours,
you know."
>The tulku had done it again. He had used one of those exasperating riddles to lead Ken on to
hopeless confusion that the monk would then allow to fester on without an answer. Ken
sighed and shook his head.

>"Take your time," Kozo counseled. "Remember to use all levels of awareness. You are
learning to see, and then to see through. Power is cultivated, not acquired. Do not take any of
this for granted. Do not assume that any of this is merely common sense."
>Kozo stared at Ken intently. "One more admonition, a last warning, and then I will be
leaving you."
>The young ninja was gripped with a fearful sense of immediate urgency, as though all time
had just run out. "Yes?" he probed. "What is it?"
>The monk leaned forward and lowered his voice. "The important thing to remember is," he
paused and looked from side to side and then stared into Ken's eyes, "don't take any of-this
too seriously."
>Kozo Matsutani laughed and laughed, and the happy peals of the man's voice blossomed and
rang from peak to peak around them. Before Ken Odate had even realized what had happened,
the little man with the soul-devouring monster embedded in his karmic destiny had wandered
into the, darkness of the Kashmir night and vanished utterly.
>
>GLOSSARY OF JAPANESE TERMS
>
>arigato-thank you
>
>boshiken-fist with thumb protruding
>
>dosha-victim who is easily controlled through manipulation of the emotions
>
>fudoken-clenched fist
>
>gokugi-top secret
>
>Hisatsutai-"force that never fails, even if killing is necessary," Matsutani shock troop squad
>
>hojutsu-ninja shooting skills kongokai-spiritual or cosmic realm of reality koppojutsu-ninja
bone-breaking skills koshijutsu-ninja muscle-and-organ attacking skills kunai-ninja leverage
tool kuniochi-female ninja metsubushi-ninja blinding powder
>Musasabishu-"flying squirrel unit,." Matsutani clandestine operatives
>mutodori-ninja unarmed defenses against weapons
>ninjutsu-art of the invisible warrior ofuro-japanese bath ryu-"tradition" or lineage of
teaching saikoshihan-chief instructor seiza-japanese kneeling posture shinshozoku-funeral
kimono shinobi iri-stealth movement shitsureishimas-excuse me sokuyaku-ninja heel-stamp
kick taijutsu-ninja unarmed combat taizokai-material realm of reality Takanometai-"eye of the
hawk" group, Matsutani intelligence network
>tanto-single-edged Japanese knife tantojutsu-ninja knife fighting skills tsuborigi-ninja boring
tool yakuza-japanese mafia
>zaibatsu-japanese business conglomerate
>
>ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
>SO MANY OF MY friends were of great assistance to me in putting together the Tulku
project. Thanks go to Bud Malmstrom, whose hand-made, four-pointed steel senban shuriken
appear in the cover photograph. Much appreciation is owed to Dr. R. Kelly Hill, Jr., whose
invaluable help was offered along the lines of technical advice and medical information.
Special mention must also be made of the wonderfully generous people who make up the
Karma Triyana Dharmachakra and Karma Thegsum Choling, who provided me with much

that was helpful in the weaving of this story. Donavan Vicha, my editor at Contemporary
Books, went far beyond the expected range of duties in assisting me to make Tulku a reality.
Rumiko and Mariko Urata were always there with great memories for detail. And no book of
mine can go to press without a thankful acknowledgment of Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi, without
whose willingness to share ...
>
>
>ABOUT THE AUTHOR
>Recognized as the western world's foremost authority on the art and practice of the
legendary Japanese shadow warrior discipline known as ninjutsu, Stephen K. Hayes left his
childhood home in Midwestern Ohio to begin a life odyssey that would take him to the
haunted, fog-enshrouded peaks and pine forests of the remote Iga region of south central
Japan. Seeking timeless secrets that would afford him mastery of his own life's progress and
provide guidance for creating a harmonious world around him, he apprenticed himself to the
34th grandmaster of the ninja tradition. Thoroughly trained in the occult methods of silent
movement and subtle combat techniques for self-protection, ways of altering his viewpoint to
grasp a greater scope of reality, and the self-knowledge that would allow him to fit into the
scheme of universal totality, the author returned to his own native land transformed, a living
bridge between the timeless wisdom of the East and the fresh vigor of the west.
>A graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, author Stephen K. Hayes now divides his
time between homes in the United States and Japan. In addition to his work as an author, he is
in constant demand as a lecturer, seminar leader and teacher. Along with his extensive series
of instructional books dealing with the art of ninjutsu, he has also published a volume of
original verses and photography, Wisdom from the Ninja Village of the Cold Moon.