Part 53 (1/2)

”They're all dead. I have no more enemies.” s.h.i.+na could hear the crackling of the flames, which had consumed the Katei doc.u.ment, like wind chimes in the air. ”Who are you?” he whispered. ”Really?”

”I am Zero,” the voice said.

”Zero?” s.h.i.+na started. ”Zero is the absence of Law.”

”It is also the creation of Zen G.o.do. A legend he created. It is, in essence, his spirit. It is Zero who has destroyed you as you sought to destroy Zen G.o.do.”

”Again Zen G.o.do! Zen G.o.do is dead, I tell you!” s.h.i.+na screamed. ”I attended his funeral!”

”Then how is it that you are dying?” the shadow asked. As he spoke, the figure moved into the flickering light and s.h.i.+na knew who it was. Impossible! he thought. It's impossible!

With that, he leaped forward, thrusting the katana of Prince Yamato Takeru.

The point of the sword ripped the gun from the shadow figure's hand. Now,grinning fiercely, s.h.i.+na slashed quickly upward and from left to right, aiming to open up the figure's rib cage.

Behind him, Michael threw the weighted chain. It snaked out, wrapping around s.h.i.+na's moving wrist. Michael pulled, and the katana was jerked away from its target.

s.h.i.+na whirled even as he stumbled. Then he did a startling thing: He let go of the sacred sword. Michael relaxed the tension on the chain, and s.h.i.+na was able to disentangle himself. At the same time, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up Masas.h.i.+'s fallen sword. He attacked.

Michael, cursing himself, ducked wildly, felt the razor-sharp edge of the katana rip open the s.h.i.+rt across his back. He dove for the sacred katana, took it up.

But now s.h.i.+na was upon him, striking blow after blow. Their bodies were entangled so closely they might have been one monstrous form. It was all Michael could do to defend himself. Once, twice and yet a third time, he felt s.h.i.+na's weapon begin to slip through his defenses.

Michael summoned all his remaining strength, but now s.h.i.+na's sword was almost at his throat and he knew that he was on the point of death. There may come a time, Tsuyo had said, when all you have been taught here will be useless, when you will battle as a warrior must, but to no avail.

Then, strength will fail you, and it will be the time of zero: where the Way has no power.

Staring up into the lined, grim face of this implacable enemy, Michael knew that this time had come. He was in zero and, like Tsuyo, his sensei, before him, he was lost. He was at the ultimate precipice where man and warrior merge and, defeated, are helplessly whirled away on the currents of an uncaring fate. It was the time of the ultimate fear. A place where courage was a concept that was yet to be born.

s.h.i.+na could sense that the end was near. His nostrils as flared as a predator's when scenting the blood of its victim. He completed two lightning strikes, then, s.h.i.+fting tactics, employing the air-sea change, he went for the killing blow. He arched his body upward, away from Michael's.

At that moment, a shot resounded in the room. s.h.i.+na cried out as the bullet fired from the shadow figure's gun smashed into his shoulder.

Michael reacted instantly, using the distraction to slash upward with the sacred katana.

s.h.i.+na felt the blade slice through the muscles of his side, and rea.s.serting his formidable powers of concentration, he blocked out the pain, dedicating himself anew to his vengeance. He screamed the samurai's km, the bloodcurdling battle yell, struck at Michael's blade with his own.

But Michael was a changed man. He had dwelled in the land ruled by fear, and he had survived. He had aceemplished what even Tsuyo had not: he had triumphed over zero. And this time, Michael had prepared himself: He had watched the crucial spot, where s.h.i.+na gripped his weapon. He antic.i.p.ated the angle of the strike and, sweeping it aside, drove the katana of Prince Yamato Takeru through his enemy's heart.

Blood fountained. Audrey was screaming. Perhaps, Michael thought, she had been screaming for some time. s.h.i.+na's mouth was open wide, his body toppling over, as he grudgingly gave up his life. Michael pulled the sword free. Light shone dully off its dark and wet surface.

Kozo s.h.i.+na lay crumpled beside the corpse of Masas.h.i.+ Taki. Tatters of what had been Mount Fuji drifted down upon him, a soft shroud not unlike the pink petals of the quince blossoms outside his study window. His eyes were blindly fixed on the sword, which he had coveted so much and which had been the instrument of his death.

For a long time, there was only silence. The rhythmic undercurrent of the machines made it seem as if they were in the bowels of the earth, some monstrous cavern out of a nightmare or a fantasy epic.

Michael and Audrey stared mutely at the figure kneeling beside the corpse of Kozo s.h.i.+na. He was no longer a shadow, though to them he could easily havebeen a ghost.

”Is it really you?” Michael said at last.

”Daddy?” Audrey whispered.

”Are you two all right?” For the moment, Philip Doss was too overcome to say anything more. He had not been so near his children for some time. And Michael, defying death over and over again. Had it not been for Michael ... He could still feel the power left in Kozo s.h.i.+na's old frame, he could still feel the proximity of his own demise. And then the situation had been reversed, and it had been Michael who had been close to death. In the end, it had taken two generations of the Doss family to end Kozo s.h.i.+na's life.

But now, as he looked from his son to his daughter, he began to realize that the truly difficult part lay ahead of him. His new life beckoned: not only to him, but to his children as well. It was such a radically different life that he was terrified that they would not be able to accept it, that they would reject him and what he had done out of hand. Battling Kozo s.h.i.+na and the Jiban for forty years was nothing compared to this awesome task. After all, this was his family. He did not know what he would be without them. He could not bear to contemplate such a thing.

”Daddy! Oh Daddy!” Audrey hurled herself into his arms with such force that she almost knocked him over. She wrapped her arms around him. ”We thought you were dead. It's so good to hold you. I never thought-oh my G.o.d! Oh my G.o.d!”

She would not let him go.

”It was a ploy,” Philip said. ”Only a ploy.” He kissed her hair, her cheek, her closed eyes. He could feel the hot wetness of her tears and was astonished to find how moved he was. His love for her burst through the years of restraint that his job, his secret life, had created in him. He felt as if his entire insides were melting, as if he were seeing his daughter, a tiny, crying infant, for the first time. He remembered that moment in a flash, like fireworks, that made him relive it all over again.

He rocked back and forth with her in his arms, and now his love was mingled with a sense of sadness and regret for those times lost to him forever when he was not there to hold her, to bathe or feed her, to sit her on his knee, to tell her stories or to ease her fears and hurts. All that was gone, washed away on a tide of his own making. But he had this, now, and his sense of grat.i.tude was overwhelming.

At last, he opened his eyes, saw Michael staring at him.

”How could you do it, Dad?” Michael was surprised at what he said. He thought he had gotten over his feelings. But now that his father was alive and in front of him, he saw that he had not. ”How could you have cheated on Mom?”

Audrey unwound herself from her father's embrace. She looked from one to the other. ”What do you mean?”

Michael told her about his father and Michiko, about how their love affair had continued for years, even after Michiko's father had forbidden it.

”I don't understand,” Audrey said. ”You cheated on Mom?”

”We cheated on one another,” Philip said. ”I would say that we never should have married in the first place, but you two are the best argument against that.” Philip steeled himself for what was to come. Truth had its own rewards, but in this case he dreaded what he had to tell them. They could hate him for it or they could disbelieve him. Either response, he knew, would have devastating results, not only for himself but for them as well.

”The fact is, your mother has a lover of her own,” Philip said. His heart was breaking as he saw the expressions of pain on his children's faces. ”A man she has known since our courting days in Tokyo. A man named Yvgeny Karsk.”

Michael started. ”Karsk?” he said, bewildered. ”Masas.h.i.+ spoke of him. Karsk is a general in the Russian KGB. He's the one who provided s.h.i.+na with the nuclear device.”

Philip nodded. ”That's right.” He told them of his first encounter with Karsk in Tokyo in 1947. ”I have been tracking him ever since. Your mother is working for him now, I'm afraid. She's left Was.h.i.+ngton with some extremely damaging intelligence.””I don't believe it,” Audrey said. ”It can't be true.”

”I'm afraid it is, Aydee,” Philip said. ”I know it must be a terrible shock-”

”How long have you known about Mom?” Michael asked.

”I suspected something of the sort for some time,” Philip said. ”I knew there was a leak at BITE, but it took me a long time to put all the pieces together.

Then I had to devise a way to expose her.”

Audrey's face was white with shock. ”This can't be happening,” she whispered.

She reached out. ”Michael, I must be having a nightmare. Please, please wake me up.”

”Aydee,” Philip said, ”I'm sorry. Your grandfather has taken over BITE pending an investigation of the theft.”

”What about Uncle Sammy?” she cried.

”Uncle Sammy had a heart attack,” Michael said, putting his arm around his sister. ”He's dead.”

”Dear G.o.d.” Audrey put her head in her hands.