Before the noodles were served, Gerard observed the small ritual of oshibori, wiping his hands with a hot, lightly scented towel. Even at Pacoima Ranch, Doctor Gempaku insisted on the civilized niceties. The black-masked boy filled Gerard’s bowl with kitsune oJon, bowed, and returned to his cooking.
Gerard ate in silence for a while, and then asked, without looking at Doctor Gempaku,
“Esmeralda’s told you what we’re supposed to be doing next?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it is possible. I can have the next Tengu ready by tomorrow night.”
“I’m not asking you if it’s possible. I know it’’s possible. What I’m asking you is, what do you thinkT’
Doctor Gempaku watched Gerard carefully for a moment or two, and then said, “What do you want me to think?”
“I just want your reaction, that’s all.”
“My moral reaction? Or my philosophical reaction?”
Gerard chased a piece of bean curd around the inside of his bowl. In the end, he gave up and set the half-emptied bowl down on the table.
“We’re sending a Tengu out to kill a man. I want to know how you respond to that. Whether you think it’s the right thing to do, not just as far as the law is concerned, but as far as the whole project is concerned.”
Doctor Gempaku picked up his chopsticks, tested them with his hands, and then snapped them in two. “Japanese esthetics,” he said, “are preoccupied with the idea of the perfect moment, the
‘accident’ that is spontaneous, and yet carefully controlled–so that it takes on an artistic and spiritual deliciousness beyond any experience that occurs either wholly accidentally or wholly deliberately. To me, this is one of the satisfactions of the Tengu. We have created the strongest and fiercest of human beings, a creature that can terrify and overwhelm anybody and everybody.
He obeys our directions, and yet he is also un- predictable. We cannot tell what he might take it into his mind to do, what grisly horrors he might suddenly decide to perpetrate. The death of the girl Sherry Cantor was a perfect example.
To the Western mind it seemed like random and brutal murder, purposeless and bloody. To us, however, it was an event of terrible beauty. The Tengu did as he was bidden; and yet the error he made in killing Sherry Cantor added an indefinable ecstasy to the whole event. We are asked to send out a Tengu to deal with Admiral Thorson. Perhaps a smiliar mistake may occur. The only criteria can be destiny and the demands of perfection. So when you ask me, is it right! I can only say that it can only be right when it actually takes place. Will it be an esthetic event or not? We cannot tell.”
Gerard sat back on his zabuton and took out his cigar case. “Are you serious?” he asked Doctor Gempaku. “Perhaps,” said Doctor Gempaku, and smiled. Gerard clipped the end off a cigar and pasted down a stray piece of broken leaf with saliva. ‘ The Tengu we sent out to deal with Sennett... how’s he doing? He was shot up pretty bad, wasn’t he?”
“He’s still in a coma. But most of the body injuries are beginning to heal satisfactorily. You know that a Tengu is so unnaturally strong partly because his metabolism is so drastically accelerated.
It gives him a shorter life, of course; but it also means that any wounds or injuries heal themselves with remarkable speed. It’s his mental state that concerns me more. Something happened after he killed Sherry Cantor that seriously and dangerously unbalanced him. It seems to me that it was a similar reaction to that of a child whose body temperature rises suddenly and dramatically. A kind of convulsion, or fit.”
“Do you think it might happen again?” asked Gerard. He struck a match and leaned forward slightly to light his cigar.
“I would prefer it if you smoked outside,” said Doctor Gempaku. “Tobacco smoke will upset the delicate balance of aromas in this kitchen. It is already bad enough that I can smell it on your clothes and hair.”
Gerard stared at Doctor Gempaku for a moment, and then slowly waved out the match. “I’ll leave the cigar until later,” he said. “Let’s go take a look at the Tengus.”
Doctor Gempaku clapped his hands, and the black-masked cook removed their bowls. Then the doctor rose from the table, and Gerard followed him through to the front of the house again, where the two black-robed guards were still keeping watch. “We’ve had one or two unwelcome intruders lately,” said Doctor Gempaku as he slipped on his shoes. “Nobody dangerous, no police or anything like that.”
“Has anybody come up to the house?” asked Gerard.
Doctor Gempaku shook his head. “They don’t get the chance. Usually I send Frank out with his shotgun to turn them around before they get the idea that anything unusual is happening here.
My young bushi stay well out of sight.’’
The sun was already up and warm as they crossed the yard to what appeared at first sight to be a rundown barn. It was only from close up that it was possible for anyone to see the modern prefabricated building which had been constructed inside the gappy, collapsing timbers, and to hear the deep humming of portable electric generators. Doctor Gempaku led the way through the sagging barn doorway, and then up a short flight of stainless-steel steps that took them to the interior door of the Tengu building. He unlocked the door, using two keys, and when it swung open he rapped on it with his knuckles to show Gerard how solid it was.
“Four-inch carbonized steel,” he said. “We fitted it last week.”
“I know,” Gerard responded coldly. “I had to pay $7,500 for it. I just hope that it proves to be worth the price.”
Doctor Gempaku smiled. “If any one of our Tengus goes berserk again, then believe me, it will be worth the price. Not even a Tengu can break his way through four inches of carbonized steel. Well, we hope not.”
Inside the building, which ran nearly 90 feet in length, the only illumination came from tiny, beadlike red safety lights. The temperature was well below 55 degrees, dry and constantly controlled. Doctor Gempaku held Gerard’s sleeve while both of them stood in the entrance, waiting for their eyes to become accustomed to the darkness and their skin accustomed to the cold. Gerard felt the sweat in the middle of his back freezing like a cape of ice.
At last, Doctor Gempaku’s face began to emerge from the crimson twilight, and Gerard could look around him and see a long, narrow corridor, with doors going off on either side. He had been here before, when the building was just erected, but there were more partitions now, more rooms where Tengus could be concealed. There was also a different resonance, a deep, almost inaudible drumming sound, both irritating and strangely threatening, like the first tremors of an earthquake. A smell, too: of incense and stale flowers and one thing more–sickly and overwhelming, the smell of dried blood.
Gerard said, “If hell could ever be created in a cabin, then this would be it.”
Doctor Gempaku steered him toward the first door on the right. “Come see the Tengu we’re trying to save. If we have not lost him overnight. A young student of ancient Japanese religion, before he joined us. A very dedicated young man. The sort of personality that refuses to be diverted from the essence of spiritual truth.”
“This is the guy who killed Sherry Cantor?”
Doctor Gempaku nodded. “He was always our most promising Tengu. But the most promising are usually the most unbalanced. It requires a high level of emotional susceptibility for a man to be suitable for the role of a Tengu, and extreme physical strength and emotional susceptibility are also a volatile mixture. Like nitroglycerin, the Tengu is both powerful and touchy.”
He unlocked the plain metal door and slid it back. It was no lighter on the other side than it had been in the corridor, but Doctor Gempaku guided Gerard into a small antechamber and then swiftly locked the door behind them. “This is always the moment of no return,” he said. “If anything should go wrong, it is better for just one or two of us to be slaughtered by the Tengu than to try to give ourselves an escape route and risk letting it out.”
�
�Well,” said Gerard, “I would call that a matter of opinion.”
“Nothing about the Tengu is a matter of opinion,” Doctor Gempaku corrected him, politely but adamantly. “The Tengu represents the ultimate physical power which any human being can achieve, coupled with a spiritual compulsion which is the greatest that any human brain can stand. When we tried out our earliest Tengu program at the Yoyogi Olympic stadium in Tokyo, during the weight-lifting events, a Tengu was able to lift over 430 kilograms. Unfortunately, because our methods were not recognized by the Olympic committee, we were forced to withdraw under conditions of great secrecy.”
“Mr. Esmeralda told me about that.” Doctor Gempaku was silent for a second or two. Then he said, “Follow me. But remember to stay quiet.
The Tengu is still sensitive to disturbances.’’ “I’ll be quiet,” Gerard assured him. Doctor Gempaku drew aside a curtain of fine jet beads which, in the darkness, Gerard hadn’t seen before. Stepping silently on slippered feet, he led the way into a room draped with black silk curtains, a room in which scores of black silk ribbons hung from the ceiling, tied with silver temple bells, birds’ feathers, pomanders of cloves and cherry blossoms, bamboo tokens, and haniwa, the clay figures usually found in ancient Japanese graves. Gerard, who had been expecting something more like a surgical theater, with cardiopulmonary resuscitators and electronic monitors and oxygen equipment, was considerably taken aback.
“What is that?” he hissed. “Where’s the Tengu?” Doctor Gempaku raised a finger to his lips to indicate total silence. Then, very gradually, he raised the lighting in the room with a dimmer switch located behind the drapes, until Gerard could see the Tengu who had torn Sherry Cantor to pieces.
The Tengu was suspended from the ceiling, like all the icons and bells which hung around him; except that he wasn’t tied up by ribbons. He was naked, and he was held up by fifteen or twenty silver claws, shaped like the hands of a demon or an old woman, whose long silver nails actually pierced deep into his flesh. Each of these claws was tied to a black silk braided cord, and in turn these were all gathered and knotted close to the ceiling, and attached to a strange kind of metal frame.
Gerard slowly approached the Tengu, with chilly sweat sliding down the insides of his armpits and a taste in his mouth like congealed grease. He had seen many horrors in Cuba. But for human butchery, he had never seen anything like this, and he could scarcely believe that the mutilated creature hanging in front of him was real.
The Tengu was still masked with his white varnished mask. He was breathing, in shallow, interrupted gasps, but Gerard wouldn’t have laid money on his survival, especially not hung up like this from the ceiling. The silver claws had dug so far into his chest muscles that they had lifted them up in bruised and dead-looking peaks, and the claws in his buttocks had almost disappeared into the flesh altogether. There were claws in his leg muscles, in his shoulders, in his arms. The claws in his feet had gone so deep that one of them had actually broken right through, from the sole to the instep. There was even a claw in his genitals, dragging up his scrotum and piercing his foreskin so that his penis looked like a hooked eel.
“This is crazy,” said Gerard. “What the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be making the guy better and you’re injuring him even worse than he was before!”
Doctor Gempaku dimmed the lights again. “What you are witnessing here is not a traditional Western form of healing.”
“What you’re doing here has just about as much to do with the traditional Western form of healing, or any form of healing, as Belsen had to do with summer camp,” Gerard retorted.
“You’re going to kill him, doctor; and if you kill him, then more than a few hundred of thousands of dollars are going to be lost with him. Money for which / am supposed to be responsible.”
Doctor Gempaku took Gerard’s arm and guided him back toward the antechamber. “You have nothing to fear, Mr. Crowley. The responsibility for getting the Tengu into the country may have been yours; the responsibility for the building of this center may have been yours; and the day-to-day administration of this plan may be yours. But, don’t you see? Everything we are doing here is planned, with great precision; every step I take, whether it is scientific or whether it is spiritual, is taken according to a very careful premeditated scheme.”
He unlocked the door, and they emerged into the corridor again. “Do you want to see the Tengu we are preparing for Admiral Thorson?”
Gerard asked, “Is he... hungup like the other one?”
“He is undergoing a similar ordeal.”
“In that case, no.”
Doctor Gempaku said, “They told me you weren’t squeamish. They told me you were a man of the world.” Gerard said, “It depends which world you’re talking about.”
They left the barn and walked back across the yard to the house. Gerard lit up his cigar and took two or three deep puffs. Doctor Gempaku glanced at him from time to time and smiled.
“I don’t know what you think is so damned amusing,” Gerard snapped as they took off their shoes on the veranda.
“You are like all Occidentals. You are so concerned by the sight of other people undergoing mutilation or pain. It disturbs you, but it also fascinates you. To us, pain is as much a part of existence as happiness. The moment of ex-186 quisite, controlled agony can bring on as much heaven as the moment of sexual climax.”
Gerard said, “You think I don’t know about De Sade, that stuff? I’ve spanked a girl or two, had my back scratched. But what you’ve got back there, doctor–that’s something else.”
“Something else?”
The guards watched them through the thin slits in their silk masks as they went upstairs to Doctor Gempaku’s study. Gerard glanced back at them quickly, but by then they had turned to the window again, in their silent watch for unwelcome intruders.
Doctor Gempaku’s study was simple and silent, tatami mats on the floor, a low table spread with papers, two scrolls hung on the wall, a framed photograph of tancho-zuru, the Japanese red-crested crane. No family pictures, no mementoes of the Tokyo Olympics, nothing to show that Doctor Gempaku had friends or family or even a past.
Gerard picked up the picture of the cranes. “You’re a bird watcher?” he asked.
Doctor Gempaku sat down on a cushion. “I keep that picture there to remind me of the proverb: The crane lives for a thousand years.’ “
“What does that mean?”
“Many things. It could be a reminder that there are forces in the universe which live forever, and yet which can be conjured up in ordinary mortals.”
“You’re talking about the Tengu?”
Doctor Gempaku said, “It does not pay to be too inquisitive about what we are doing here, Mr.
Crowley, or how we do it.”
“Doctor Gempaku,” said Gerard, taking his cigar out of his mouth. “I was shocked back there, I’ll admit. Who wouldn’t have been? But believe me, I’m not inquisitive. I’m just here to do what I’ve been paid to do. You just go ahead and do whatever you want, don’t mind me.” Now Gerard was laying on his down-South good-ole-boy accent really thickly. “You can hang fellas up, doctor. You can prick ‘em and pat ‘em and mark ‘em with T. You do whatever you want. You just go right ahead.
Why,” he said, and now his smile was cold, and he looked at Doctor Gempaku with an expression which anybody from Batista’s Havana would immediately have recognized as his Tve-got-you-sized-up’ look, “why, you can even raise the devil if the mind takes you. You won’t catch me sticking my nose in.”
Doctor Gempaku slowly closed the small book which was lying on the table in front of him. He took off his spectacles. Gerard watched him and puffed at his cigar, watched and puffed, while the sun suddenly filled the room with dazzling morning light.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jerry Sennett was falling asleep in front of the television when the telephone rang. He had been dreaming about Japan, and as he crossed the room to the telephone he was still c
rossing the Rikugien gardens in Tokyo, under a sky that threatened rain.
“Mr. Sennett? Sergeant Skrolnik, Homicide.” The harsh voice brought Jerry back to Orchid Place, and Dan Rather, and a sort of reality.
“Hallo, sergeant.”
“Are you okay?” asked Skrolnik. “You sound like you’ve got yourself a cold.”
“I was sleeping. Well, nearly.”
‘‘I’m sorry. But we’ve got ourselves a suspect in custody, and I’d appreciate your coming down to headquarters to take a look at him. You know–see if you recognize him or not.” Tengu “Sergeant, I was out when Ms. Cantor was murdered. I didn’t see anybody.”
“Sure, I know that,” said Skrolnik. “But there’s a chance that seeing this guy could jog your memory. You know, maybe you glimpsed him in the locality one day, something like that.”
“Can I bring Mr. Holt along with me?”
“Mr. Holt?” asked Skrolnik sharply. “You mean Mack Holt, the victim’s last known romantic association?”
Jerry was drinking from a stale glass of whiskey with a sticky rim. He coughed, and almost choked. “If you want to put it so poetically, yes. That’s him.”
“You’re an acquaintance of his?”
“Only since the murder.”
“Well... okay then, bring him down. Why not? We can kill two birds with one stone.”
Jerry went to the kitchen, stuffed a couple of cheese crackers into his mouth, and then, puffing crumbs, switched off all the lights and locked the back door. He pulled on an old plaid jacket, switched off the television, and then went out to his car. He was fumbling for his keys when he became aware of something on the windshield, something white, flapping in the evening breeze.
He approached the car slowly, then picked the sheet of paper out from the windshield wiper. It was thin paper, the kind that Japanese calligraphers used for scrollwork. On it were written, with a brush, the English words “The hawks will return to their roost.’’
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