Chapter 16: Torbay
Emily spoke to Michael the next day, filling him on all the details of what Connie had told her. His assessment was quite similar to Emily’s. They didn’t know who she is, or where, yet. They were also confused about exactly who they were looking for, and that could be useful later. Michael confirmed that Meacham had indeed suffered a serious defeat in Taiwan. He had reason to suspect something Connie seemed not to know, namely that Burzynski may have tipped off the Chinese. They both found his suspicion alarming. If Burzynski was willing to conspire with foreign agents for his own ends, that meant he was capable of anything. Michael thought their presence in New Mexico was undetectable, but he agreed with Emily that it would be a good idea to move now, at their leisure, rather than waiting until a hasty departure would become necessary.
To Emily’s immense satisfaction, Michael also thought this would be a good moment for a family reunion, and the crush of holiday travel would make it easier to move around unnoticed. He arranged for Andie and his son to meet them, and sent travel documents to Emily under the name Emily Chung. A week later, after several diversions through southeast Asia, Emily arrived at the airport in Auckland. Andie came to meet her in a rental car and drove her to a large beachside villa on the north end of Torbay.
Andie was amused to see Emily dressed in her clothes. She recognized them right away, and was more than a little flattered to see how well they fit. She found it even slightly comical to see the transformation of the little commando who lived over her garage into a beautiful, stylish young woman.
When they pulled into the driveway of the villa, Yuki, who had been waiting nervously for over an hour, ran to the car and threw her arms around her daughter for the first time. She hung on Emily’s shoulder for as long as she could. But eventually a child must pull away. Yuki was surprised by how big Emily was. She always thought of her as a little girl. She couldn’t help but notice how solid she felt, how strong, how tall. It was almost like hugging George. She concealed a little tear from everyone. This was supposed to be a happy occasion.
They spent the next few days swimming in the southern ocean, sailing on a little boat Michael had somehow acquired—his resourcefulness always seemed endless. There were islands across the bay to explore, wildlife preserves, snorkeling, hiking, all the usual Christmas activities! Yuki was determined to spend as much time as possible with her daughter, to share every activity, do everything she did. But she just didn’t have the stamina. Her daughter was amazing. She ran for miles before breakfast, did hundreds of push ups, sit ups, pull ups. And then she wanted to go out adventuring for the rest of the day!
Even Michael’s security people were impressed. None of them quite knew what to make of her. Two in particular paid special attention to her morning regimen. Ethan and Jesse were former Israeli commandos, younger than the rest of the security personnel, in their thirties. They had heard she was a trained martial artist, and were naturally interested to know more. They could see she was in shape, and when she practiced her katas on the beach they watched closely. Ethan, the larger of the two, was dubious. They were professional soldiers, trained in the most efficient fighting skills military technology could devise. She was just an amateur, a girl. What could she know? In other words, he was curious.
Jesse was even more curious. He wanted to see exactly what she was capable of. He approached her during one of her morning training sessions and asked her if she had done much sparring. Did she want to work out with them? She figured their training would primarily be in Krav Maga. She had seen some demonstrations of this style, but never sparred with a practitioner. She was intrigued. She knew it to be very conservative, relying mainly on punch techniques and hard blocks, as well a few low kicks and some rudimentary, but effective joint locks.
“Sure, Jesse,” she replied. “But I’d like to watch you guys first, if that’s okay.”
Ethan was more than willing to oblige her, in part because he knew he could impress her in a contest with Jesse. They had fashioned some basic pads out of Kevlar vests and old bag gloves. It wasn’t much protection, but it would allow them to strike with full force to the chest. Emily tried one on, then laid it aside. It was harder than typical sparring gear, more like a shell or armor. She thought it would be restrictive, also hard on your knuckles if you punched it.
Jesse and Ethan’s match was fierce. They punched and blocked with impressive ferocity. All their moves were quick and forceful. Emily could see that speed and strength were at the core of their impressive skills. They were always looking to finish the match with a single, devastating blow. She knew that meant they had mistaken pure aggression for initiative. They had no genuine access to their own sen. Although they were capable of many clever feints and deceptions, they were not really capable of holding back. Their restraint was only aggression deferred. The exigencies of the fight determined their actions, rather than the other way around. In the end, Ethan overpowered Jesse with a straight punch to the chest and a quick leg sweep. He landed on his back with Ethan’s clenched fist just above his nose. He had no choice but to concede.
Jesse smiled up at his friend, and they both turned to Emily expectantly. She congratulated them on their skills and their stamina. They were truly impressive. They had fought at a furious pace for nearly a minute, which is practically an eternity in a fight.
“Would you like to give it a try, Miss Emily,” Ethan asked politely, but with a needling undertone. “We’ll go easy on you.”
“I’m more your size,” Jesse suggested sincerely. “How about we give it a go?”
“Why not,” Emily said. “But I’m pretty sure this is one of those things where size doesn’t really matter.” Ethan snorted. She was needling him in return, and they both knew it. She flashed him a sneaky smile and brought back his good humor. He knew she was manipulating him, but still found it irresistible. He handed her his pads and gloves. She hefted them for a moment and then laid them off to the side of their imaginary ring.
“You better wear those,” Jesse insisted. “I don’t want to hurt you. The boss would have our heads, and who knows what Andie and Yuki would do to us.” He seemed genuinely concerned for her safety.
“I’ll wear the gloves, but not the shell. It’s too heavy for me,” she said, needling Ethan again. “Don’t worry about hitting me. I won’t tell if you don’t,” she teased him.
“Fine! Then I’ll take my pads off too. I guess I’ll have to just do those little taps, like they do in karate sparring.” Emily laughed, and Ethan joined her.
“Don’t worry,” she needled again with a smirk. “I won’t hit you any harder than you try to hit me.”
Ethan was overjoyed with Jesse’s embarrassment.
Emily stood ready and looked Jesse in the eyes. She had seen how fond he and Ethan were of high speed punching and blocking, a sort of pugilistic fencing. She thought it might make Jesse feel more comfortable if she indulged him in this. They faced each other for a long moment. He was trying to read her, to develop a series of feints so he could tap her a couple of times, sweep her legs and then force her to concede without risking any hard punches. Emily could see he wanted her to try to block one of his leg feints, so she obliged him. He followed with a quick series of punches to her head and chest. She blocked them all one after another. Her blocks became more forceful with each one, gradually forcing Jesse to retreat step by step. He was clearly distressed by this development, and didn’t want Ethan to accuse him later of being fooled by this girl’s wiles. He tried to turn the tide by stepping forward into a more aggressive attack. But before he could put his left foot down Emily kicked it out from under him. He fell forward and to his left as Emily hit him lightly with several quick strikes to his chest and throat. Just before he hit the ground, she grabbed his right wrist and twisted him over so his face was in the sand.
Jesse let out a sorrowful moan. Emily hadn’t hurt him, but he knew he had been decisively beaten. And so did Ethan, who roared his approval. At leas
t she had done him the favor of letting him hide his face in the sand so Ethan couldn’t see the expression of utter perplexity written so unmistakably across it. How had she done it, he asked himself. Everything had been going so well. She hadn’t overpowered him. She wasn’t any faster than he was. It was just like the punch and block duels he and Ethan had everyday. But Ethan had never managed to do anything like that to him. Finally, he let the truth slip into his consciousness: the point hadn’t even been close.
He picked himself up, dusted off the sand and faced her, ready to try again. This time Emily decided to control the terms of the fight more thoroughly. She let him make the first move again. He lunged in with a left jab followed by a right uppercut. Instead of blocking, she stepped back and swirled her arms around both of his. He couldn’t quite understand what she was doing. She had grabbed hold of his wrists and twisted them over and under. He could feel himself losing his footing as the pain in his elbows and shoulders forced him to bend his entire body to the side. He thought he would end up kneeling and hoped to find a way out from there. But the twisting movement accelerated and he found himself flipping head over heels, ending up on his back in the sand. Before he could gather his wits, Emily was on top of him and he was defenseless.
In the third point, Emily made the first move, realizing Jesse must feel he’d been tricked into acting first before. Krav Maga was, after all, a deeply conservative fighting style. He waited to see what she would do. She looked directly into his face, caught his attention, kicked him lightly in the chest before he had a chance to react. He rocked back slightly on his heels, then leaned forward and tried to anticipate another kick. She surprised him by stepping directly into his block. He tried to grab her—what else could he do?—she slapped his hands aside and planted a side kick into his chest that sent him sprawling backwards. He lay on his back for a moment shaking his head in disbelief. He had absolutely no idea how she had managed to dominate him so thoroughly. Ethan laughed after the first two falls. But now even he was agape. Watching attentively from the side, he still had not been able to comprehend her technique.
Emily turned toward Ethan and smiled demurely at him.
“You want to have a go? Don’t worry. I’ll go easy on you.” Ordinarily Ethan would have reacted to a challenge like that with an easy laugh or some bravado. But he was clearly shaken by what he had just seen, and she knew it. Still he couldn’t decline, not in front of his friend. He’d never live it down. He stood in front of Emily with visible trepidation. She knew he relied entirely on his superior size and speed in his fighting, and he was significantly larger and stronger than her. But he fared no better than Jesse had. She sent him sprawling face down into the sand each time, playing on his desperate aggressiveness.
After the third fall, she walked over, extended her hand and helped him up. He was clearly embarrassed to have shared his friend’s fate. She smiled at him graciously and, strangely, he felt better about the whole thing. When he turned toward Jesse, his friend was surprised to see him blushing. Both of them fully expected to hear all about their defeat at the hands of this girl from the rest of the security team for weeks to come. Of course, Emily said nothing to anyone. The next day, they asked her to be their teacher.
The only witnesses to the events of that morning were Andie and Yuki. They had watched from behind a hedge on the back lawn. Yuki wasn’t surprised Jesse and Ethan had noticed her daughter’s workout regimen. But it hadn’t occurred to her that she would end up sparring with them. When she saw her toss the pads aside she was worried. She had seen how ferociously those guys tended to fight when they sparred. She hoped they would have the good sense to take it easy on her. When the fighting began in earnest, her jaw dropped. Jesse was attacking her so fiercely! When moments later Emily turned the tables on him and he ended up face down in the sand, Yuki and Andie gasped simultaneously. They looked at each other and started giggling. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
For the first time, Yuki began to realize just how much the martial arts must mean to her daughter. This was clearly more than just a hobby. She had just handled two highly trained professional soldiers as if they were schoolboys.
Andie hoped they weren’t overly mortified by what had just happened to them. But as astonished and relieved as Yuki was by what she had just seen, it didn’t get her any closer to her daughter.
In the end, Yuki found an activity she could share with Emily, one that had no limits for her, clothes shopping! It was every mother’s dream, and finally she got to indulge in it too. They drove into Auckland, just Emily and Yuki, and hit all the fancy shops. Yuki could do this for the rest of the holiday if she had her way. But finally even Emily had had enough. Yuki got her all sorts of super stylish clothes and accessories, so much in fact that she had to buy her new bags to haul it home in. It was just like her daughter to want to use a duffle bag. She must have inherited that habit from her father. Yuki picked out a fancy new set of Japanese luggage, enough to hold her new wardrobe.
They had lunch in a little Japanese restaurant near the university. Somehow, Emily found herself drawn to the university end of town. Perhaps she just steered the car toward wherever the young people were by some sort of powerful sympathy. Yuki had a bowl of udon with fish cakes, and Emily had a sashimi plate with pickled vegetables. She could see her mother was about to burst with the million things she wanted to say. So Emily diverted her into a question about college plans. Yuki’s face began to glow from the fire in her eyes. She had so much to tell her daughter, and so much to find out about what she wanted to do.
“Mom, I already applied to five schools. I think it’s probably too late to do anymore applications.”
Yuki was pleased to hear about her daughter’s grades, and even surprised to hear about her test scores. She had chosen schools well, some Ivy, some fine state schools. With her credentials, she could pretty much go wherever she wanted, if only she could make it to the fall. That little worry, catastrophic in its dimensions, lingered in the back of all of Yuki’s joy and satisfaction. Her daughter was amazing, but she was also in danger. They all were.
“What do you want to study, do you know yet?”
“I don’t really know, Mom. Maybe history. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry about what, Chi-chan?”
“I know you wanted me to do science, and I like that stuff. But right now history looks more interesting.”
“It’s okay, Sweet Pea. You get to follow your heart. You can always change your mind later. I just want you to go to college and find your way.”
Yuki’s pleasure in this conversation was almost indescribable. It was even greater than what she experienced on the shopping spree. She couldn’t remember ever being this happy.
For Emily, the satisfaction she got from her mother’s approval was immense. She always knew Yuki loved her, but she had never experienced her mother’s love first hand before. She told her mother every detail of her domestic arrangements, the apartment, how much she liked wearing Andie’s clothes, her new style, the truck and the dirt bike.
Yuki wanted to hear all about her friends. Why hadn’t she ever met any of them before? What were their families like? She was especially taken by Emily’s description of Wayne. He sounded like a kindly walrus or a sea lion.
After lunch, they strolled over to Albert Park and found a bench with a view of the clock tower. The park was usually crowded during the lunch hour, but by now most people had gone back to work. They had the place pretty much to themselves. Yuki told her daughter all about her father, how they met, how much she came to love him, about her early childhood in Hawaii and later in Virginia. They both wept and held each other. It was cathartic. They needed to live through their loss together, to work out their feelings together. This was how they would become the family they had never truly been before. It was almost dinner time before they looked up. They drove back to the villa, feeling drained but also revived at the same time.
Naturally, Yuki and Andie ha
d to crow over all of Emily’s new clothes. They made her try everything on for them, oohed and aahed over each outfit. Michael watched from a distance with a little smile. Their son, Anthony, was a little too young at twelve to appreciate this scene. Later, at the dinner table, they talked over all the events of the day. After dinner, Emily sought a quiet moment with Michael to talk over some of the trickier points of her going to college, the problem of changing the name on her school records, and related matters. Michael had a couple of suggestions.
“Emily, you know I can change all the records for you, seamlessly, craft an entire identity for you. You don’t have to stay in Virginia any longer.” She knew he would propose something like this, but it just didn’t suit her idea of a life.
“Don’t worry, I know you can,” she said diplomatically. “But I want to have a genuine identity. I want to come from the place where I really grew up. I can’t do that if I leave now.”
She was absolutely determined on this point, and Michael saw this right away. He knew well enough the nature of her determination. But he really wanted to find some way to be of service to her, no matter what shape it eventually took.
“If you stay, you’ll have to stay as Emily Kane, at least until graduation. You can change all your records after that. There’s nothing shady or illegal about it. The only records that matter are the school transcripts.”
“So far, I’ve been changing over some things to Hsiao or Chung. Car registrations, driver’s license, that sort of thing. And of course I came here as Chung. But in person, everyone who knows me calls me Kane.”
“That’s probably the best you can do, for now,” he said. “But any of those names you use now, you’ll have to leave behind completely at graduation. Are you ready for that?”
“Yeah, I guess,” she replied tentatively. “I’ll just tell everyone I was using an informal family name, and that my legal name is Michiko Tenno.”
Michael was struck by the subtle simplicity of her plan. Her friends and acquaintances, and the school officials too, would recognize her by whatever name she offered them. After all, she had the legal documentation for that name. He had always been impressed by the contrivance of this identity. George and Yuki had crafted it on their own, through their own connections, without his assistance. He had only heard about it for the first time a few months ago. He knew for it to be of any real value, it was important he not have any discoverable connection to it, no matter how closely anyone looked.
Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) Page 15