The Ninja's Oath, page 20
“Is your name Lily Wong?”
“Yes.”
“Is this your address?”
“The address on my license is correct.”
“If you don’t tell us the truth, we will track down your family. Is that what you want? For us to hurt your family the way we are hurting you?”
I had registered my license with a postal service address. I wasn’t supposed to, but I didn’t like anyone—especially government databases—to know where I lived. If only I had been smart enough to keep my mouth shut when the karate Neanderthal had grilled me about my training. I had no doubt he was the reason I was here. I must have said something about Sensei that had triggered an alert.
I knocked the back of my head on the wall, trying to remember what I had disclosed before the drugs had turned my mind into mush. His home address? His email? His phone number? I must have given them something useful, or why would they have stopped?
I patted my empty pants pockets. They had taken my jacket, shoes, wallet, and phone. Had they figured out the access code? Or had I remembered it and confessed?
A cry leapt from my throat.
I patted my pockets again, furiously searching for my only connection to Baba and Ma. Was he still vomiting? Had the headaches finally stopped? How many side effects from tests did my father have to suffer before the doctors diagnosed a disease they could treat? The potential maladies terrified me more than any torture my captors could inflict.
And what about poor Ma, shouldering this burden without any support from me? My captors had taken more than contact information and a means for escape. Without my phone, I couldn’t even offer her a virtual hug.
I banged my head against the wall as a flood of fear and frustration rolled down my face.
Baba. Ma. Sensei. Suyin.
I was failing them all when they needed me the most.
Stop it, Lily.
Wallowing in guilt and fear was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
I heaved back my sobs and brought my emotions under control. I needed to move forward and figure out how to escape.
Forty-Three
Ren flowed with the Osaka Station crowd as they hurried through the terminal to catch the next train. He monitored his speed to the low end of average to account for the elderly age he hoped to project. His tan polyester rain jacket, wrinkle-resistant high-waisted slacks, and floppy-rimmed bucket hat completed his look. His well-worn shoes, although deceptively supple, prioritized stability over style, as favored by older Japanese men. He hadn’t brought much, just a nylon backpack with the bare essentials and a sling bag he wore beneath his jacket strapped close to his chest. With an occasional hitch in his step and the slump of age in his spine, he looked like a fit ninety-year-old man who exercised with other members of Japan’s elderly community in the parks. In truth, he could have out-paced every commuter in the terminal.
Ren’s usual way of walking was to lead with his hips and let his legs and feet keep up the pace. Although it looked no different to the untrained eye, the use of gravity in motion reduced his effort and increased his speed. At seventy, with a short and stocky build, he could sustain five miles per hour over a flat terrain. He could maintain four miles per hour in the hills. Although he couldn’t keep up with Lily-chan, he easily surpassed the average unfit American and held his own with most athletic people half his age.
He boarded the escalator to the final leg in his twenty-hour commute from LAX, arriving via Kobe Airport instead of the more expected Kansai. He had used his American passport and his alias name since whoever had sent him the email with Lily’s photo had not addressed it to George or to Ren. Nor had they mentioned his birth name from Japan. Instead, they had used the ninja name only those who had trained with Tashigi Sensei would know.
He waited on the platform and enjoyed a moment of space in front of him before the train arrived. After so many years living in America, he had forgotten the crowds and the efficiency of Japan’s railway system. Twenty minutes later, it had whisked him to his final stop at Shinimamiya Station. Once outside, he breathed in the city night and noise. So different from the soothing chirp of crickets and the quieter urban drone around his woodsy Los Feliz home. Even the nicer apartment buildings crowding from the sides felt dingy and industrial to him. When he spotted Tsutenkaku Tower in the distance lit up in pink and white, he quickened his pace to escape the rumbling of the trains.
What was Lily-chan doing in Osaka?
How had she fallen into criminal ninja hands?
Despite all of his training and conditioning, George Ren Tanaka felt old. He had stayed awake during his flights so he would arrive ready to sleep, which made eleven p.m. feel uncommonly late.
He turned off the road that would have taken him to the emailed address and hurried the last few blocks toward his capsule hotel. He found it wedged between other buildings as narrow as it. The exposed stairwell looked almost as wide as the skinny seven-story tower it serviced. Osaka was the third most populated city in Japan, with too many people in a finite space.
Inside the lobby, he stored his shoes in a locker, donned the slippers he was expected to wear, and received a sensor that would light up his sleeping capsule when he drew near. Thanking the attendant, he walked past the vending machines in the common area and took the outside stairwell up to the fifth floor. He used the common facilities, changed into the sleep shirt and shorts provided for guests, stored his belongings in a coin locker, and walked down the hall.
The empty capsules had their privacy screens up to show a neatly made mattresses and pillows at the far end where the power outlets would be found. None of the capsules on this floor had the television upgrades offered for an additional three hundred yen. Nor did they house any women. The female guests stayed on the lower floors with separate access keys. Halfway down the corridor, an upper-level capsule lit up.
Ren climbed the steps, crawled into his pod, slid down his privacy shade, and fell immediately to sleep.
Forty-Four
I stared into darkness almost as black as if I had kept my eyes closed. My abductors had turned on an overhead light earlier so I could see the rice and tofu they had given me to eat. Since they had finally provided a chamber pot, I made use of it while I could see. An hour or so later, they collected the rice bowl and plastic spoon, left me the pot, and turned off the light.
I observed as much as I could on the two occasions when my guard— five foot eight, spiky gelled hair, no visible tattoos—opened the door. He came with a partner—stocky, shaved head, also no tattoos—who stood at the door with a baton in case I tried to escape. I couldn’t tell if they had been part of the trio who attacked me in the alley, but I remembered Shaved Head from the basement where I had been strapped to a chair. He tapped his baton on his hand, as if to remind me of its feel.
The hallway behind them had the same cream-colored walls and speckled vinyl tiles as my cell. A television played in the distance but I couldn’t tell what kind of show. No other voices or sounds. As I had discerned when I first woke up, I was locked in an empty closet with nothing I could use to escape. Best I could tell, that had been two or three hours ago.
I sat against the wall with straight legs, flexing and pointing my feet. Although I had stretched out my aches and tested for injuries after the meal with a surprisingly peaceful yoga flow in the dark, my body and mind had reverted to their previously locked-up, stressed-out state. If it were late evening as I suspected, an entire day and night had passed for my parents without any messages from me.
Had my hastily crafted words calmed and consoled my mother as I hoped? Or had I fueled Ma’s temper to fight with Baba’s nurse? If only I could reread the message I had sent from Pudong as Uncle had hustled me off of the train.
Then again, if I still had my phone, I’d already be out of this mess.
I folded over my legs, resting my face in my hands, and breathed through the protesting muscles that protected my ribs. The fact that I could still inhale deeply suggested only a crack or a bruise. It would be harder to fight with a fractured bone protruding from my chest. Even so, the pain was hard to ignore. When it subsided, my worries rolled into the void.
My father in the hospital.
My mother frightened and alone.
The horrible diseases the lumbar puncture could detect.
I clasped my hands and willed my father to hear. “I love you, Baba. Please, please, please be okay.”
And what about poor Ma imploding from stress? What horrors would she imagine from my silence?
Nothing worse than the truth.
I had come to the conclusion that my skillful, tattoo-less captors were ninja and the karate Neanderthal was a stooge. For some reason I had yet to discern, they wanted Sensei, and they wanted him bad. Since they had stopped questioning me, I had likely given them enough information to locate my teacher via email or phone.
Please let me not have given them his Los Feliz address.
If they wanted something from Sensei, they would have offered me up in trade or threatened to kill me if he didn’t comply. I didn’t remember anyone snapping a photo, but it seemed likely they had. If Sensei had seen it, he would undoubtedly come to Japan.
All because of my ego and pride.
I thumped my forehead against my knees. What damage had my careless actions caused? If only I had known more about his life, I could have…
Could have what, Lily? Kept your damn mouth shut?
I knocked my head against the wall as I straightened my back. As if it would do any good—I was as hard-headed and stubborn as an ox. Clearly, I was born in the wrong astrological year or the impact would have broken through my fragile water rooster skull. Then again, roosters were notoriously boastful and vain. How ironic that my truest nature would be the source of my defeat.
All those years of training and exploration.
All the wisdom my teacher and family had tried to impart.
Wasted and ignored when I needed it the most.
Forty-Five
Ren greeted the morning with determined optimism. He meditated in his capsule, showered in the communal facilities, and changed into a long-sleeve shirt that he buttoned to the throat and tucked into the same high-waisted slacks and bucket hat he had worn the previous night. Aside from his wallet and phone, the only items he carried on his person was a key to a locker where he had hidden the scroll.
He walked down an alley, boxed in by narrow apartment buildings and wires overhead, then under the bridge of an elevated train before he reached a wider city street. Only nine in the morning and already the noise assaulted his ears.
He crossed the massive intersection and followed the map on his phone to a four-lane street that ran along the edge of Shinsekai. Instead of entering the shopping neighborhood from the pedestrian boardwalk on the corner, he continued down the street to the first neighborhood road. Fifty years had passed since Ren had entered Shinsekai. He wanted to refresh his memory and note the roads, alleys, and walkways that surrounded the address.
Ren had been twenty when he and his training buddies had come to Osaka for a day trip looking for cheap bars, women, and gambling. After striking out in the trendier tourist locations, Ichiro, the self-appointed leader of the expedition, had suggested they try Shinsekai. The original amusement area had lost its luster since World War II after the Luna Park rides and games had shut down and the original Tsutenkaku Tower had been replaced after the fire. What Ren and his buddies had seen was a shabby version of entertainment and a seedy warren of residential hovels, many of which were on alleys only wide enough for bikes. They had filled their bellies and gambled in a gaming hall, but they never found any young women interested in them. Then Ichiro had suggested the red-light district for what he called “sure things.” He hadn’t mentioned paying for sex. Ren had taken one look at the women kneeling on display in the “restaurant” windows while their madams waved men over for “tea,” and took the train back to Iga on his own. He had never felt any need to visit Tobita Shinchi, Shinsekai, or any other part of Osaka again.
“So long ago,” Ren muttered, playing into the elderly image he was trying to present.
This neighborhood was one of the oldest in Osaka, with two- and three-story structures built before the war. As he wandered through the warren of roads—some passable by car, others narrow enough to make a cyclist think twice—he greeted the middle-aged and elderly residents he passed. Since Shinsekai drew most of its business at night, most of the shops, bars, and eateries had their metal rolling doors down. When he spotted two women rolling their grocery baskets, he followed them to a covered shopping arcade and bought an egg musubi, which he nibbled as he strolled to the address where he had been instructed to come.
The building sat on a corner with a kushikatsu restaurant below and a second story above.
Offices? Apartments? Headquarters for Ichiro’s ninja gang?
Whatever was up there had to be accessed from inside via the restaurant’s main entrance or one of the two rear exits that fed into an alley walkway in back. The side road where he now stood was the closest egress, with another potential escape at the other end, a long distance away. Although both roads were open to vehicles in the daytime, they might be coned off for pedestrian use at night. Having identified all possible routes into and out of the building, he strolled to the corner to find an inconspicuous place to observe and to think.
The noodle shop across from the restaurant was ideal, if not for the two men seated at the window table Ren would have preferred. One was a Chinese man in his sixties. The age and ethnicity of the other man was not as easy to guess. Thirties or forties. Southeast Asian for sure. Possibly American Indian, East Indian, Latin, or African in the mix. Ren knew three things for sure: the man was handsome, athletic, and dangerous.
Ren lowered his eyes and continued to stroll. It would be just like Ichiro to post men on watch.
The Chinese man came outside and stepped into his path. “What are you doing here?”
Ren adjusted his position so he could surveil the road and check to make sure the younger, more dangerous-looking man was still in his seat.
The Chinese man scoffed. “Never mind. You can tell us inside.”
“Excuse me?”
“I know who you are, George Ren Tanaka. I just don’t know why you are here.”
Ren brought his hands up in an apologetic bow while secretly preparing himself to attack. “You are mistaken.”
“Aiya. You’re Lily’s teacher. We are her friends. Now stop the old-man act, get inside, and tell us what you’re doing in Japan.”
Ren relaxed as he recognized the man’s ornery response. “And you are the cook who keeps Lily-chan on her toes.”
The man shrugged as if this were a hopeless task and marched into the noodle shop. Curious beyond measure, Ren followed him inside. Although the dangerous partner remained seated, he inclined his head in greeting as if welcoming a friend.
Ren offered a slight bow but remained on his feet. “I fear you have me at a disadvantage. I am George Tanaka. You may call me Ren.”
The man’s dark eyes twinkled with delight—the kind of mischievousness that flashes the second before a bully kicks out a chair. Then his brows rose into devilish peaks that made him seem simultaneously seductive, sinister, and amused.
Ren nodded in recognition and sat. “You are the man who steals Lily-chan’s center.”
The man smiled. “Is that what she told you?”
“Was that not your intent?”
He nodded as if Ren had scored a point. “My name is J Tran. This is Lee Chang. You call yourself George Ren Tanaka but I don’t believe that’s your name.”
Chang waved over a waiter. “Give us three beef noodle soups. And tea.” He turned to Ren. “You want tea?”
Ren bowed to the server. “Dozo.”
Once the server left, Chang scowled at Tran. “Who cares what he calls himself?” He turned to Ren. “Why are you here?”
“I received an email with a photograph of Lily-chan tied up in a room, unconscious with signs of a beating.”
Chang cursed. Tran remained utterly still, like a snake poised to strike if Ren didn’t tell the whole and exact truth.
“The subject line of the email used a name given to me by my former teacher in Japan.” He nodded toward the restaurant on the corner. “The message told me to come to that address. How about you? Out of all the restaurants in Osaka, why have you chosen this noodle shop to eat?”
Tran glanced out the window. “It’s the last address Lily gave us before she disappeared.”
“Why was she there?”
“You first.”
Ren could tell this man would not budge, so he brought up the email and handed him the phone.
As Tran examined the photograph and message, Chang crowded in for a look, then turned back to Ren. “It says you stole something. What did you take?”
Ren folded his hands. “My story cannot be told in one breath.”
“Good,” Chang said as the server brought three bowls of nikusui udon soup and three cups of green tea. He picked up a sliver of beef dusted with red shichimi spice with his chopsticks and pointed it at Ren. “You can entertain us while we eat.”
Forty-Six
Ren sipped his tea as he pondered the best place to begin and how much of his history he wanted to disclose.
Steam curled around Tran’s face as he leaned over his soup. “Lily is in danger because of something in your past. If we’re going to help her, we need to know the whole truth.”
“I understand. But that makes it no easier to tell.”
Tran picked up a mouthful of noodles. “That restaurant won’t open until eleven. Take all the time you need.”
Ren nodded and opened the dam to a flood of unhappy memories. He closed his eyes and took a calming breath. When swept away by the tide of emotions, it was best to swim one stroke at a time.
