The Death and Life of Nicholas Linnear Read Online Free PDF Page B

arc that smashed the light bulb and caused the lamp to crash to the floor.
    Darkness and chaos: this was the terrain of the ninja, the locus within which he operated at peak efficiency. And, as every ninja is taught, in darkness there is death.
    Gunshots—bullets crossing the spot where Nicholas had been standing; he was no longer there. He was already executing tai-sabaki —the sweeping circular movements, the serene gliding pivots that imbue the attack with the bokken or the katana —polished wood or ten thousand layers of steel, it didn’t matter which—with an inexorable power.
    The tai-sabaki sweeps slammed the guns from two of the men, then the third, causing fractured hands or wrists. Nicholas felt the presence of the fourth man advancing toward him through the darkness; he could scent him as if they were predator and prey amid a confusing tangle of tree limbs and thorny underbrush. Nicholas deepened his stance and, as he did so, he descended into kokoro . He felt the universe all around him as if it were a series of concentric spheres, the forces and vectors within them reaching out to him like old friends.
    The key to either offense or defense, Sun Tzu wrote, is designing them for impenetrability. Nicholas stood his ground as the fourth man came on. He had thrown his gun away; it was useless in the dark, with his three compatriots in possible lines of fire. In its stead, Nicholas scented oiled steel—a knife of some kind, possibly a wakizashi .
    Now he had scented Nicholas as well, for he came rushing headlong at him. Nicholas allowed this, pivoting at the last possible second so that the man brushed past his right side. Continuing his pivot, Nicholas smashed the pole against the man’s spine and, as he arched backward, Nicholas relieved him of his weapon: it was indeed a samurai’s short sword.
    The man, recovering, swung backward, making contact with Nicholas’s side, but reaching out, almost leisurely, Nicholas slipped the wakizashi between two of his ribs. Then he went after the other three men. One of them managed to whip a wire around Nicholas’s neck, jerking him backward, drawing a crescent of blood across his throat. Reversing the wakizashi , Nicholas stabbed him in the abdomen. As he fell away, the final two came at Nicholas from either side. The pole dispatched one, the hilt of the sword broke the other’s nose, then cracked his skull.
    Nicholas heard the pounding of shoes down a staircase. He counted six, seven, eight pairs. Racing back to the bomb-maker’s lab, he upended the trough, sending the ball bearings, nails, and screws skittering into the larger space. Prying open the cans of paint and thinner, he set them alight. Then he exited the building through the same rear window by which he had entered.
    The fire raged, the wooden structure, abetted by the accelerants, igniting like a bonfire of kiln-dried wood. Nicholas stood across the street watching the front door. Already, thick black smoke billowed out the windows in the upper stories that had been thrust open. One man, panicked and blinded, launched himself out of one of the windows, only to crack open his skull on the cement sidewalk.
    He waited for Baron Po to appear, but the building was engulfed so quickly, the fire so fierce, no one had a prayer of escaping the inferno. He left while the fire engines were still maneuvering down the adjacent streets large enough to accommodate their size and bulk.
    Sun Tzu had something important to say about handling an ally: First, to make him acquiesce to your desires by making him yield through disadvantages. Second, to urge him to act quickly through advantages.
    Nicholas had cause to think about this as he lay in the fragrant tangle of Anna Song’s silk sheets. It was well past daybreak, but the wooden blinds in her enormous bedroom were still closed against the sunlight. He had come into her apartment in the Shanghai sky on the last tendrils of darkness. No one had seen him enter the