Stealth of the Ninja

by Philip Roy

  “Japan?”

  I could hear the fear in Sheba’s voice now, and there was a long pause, which told me she was sharing the news about Japan with Ziegfried. I could picture the two of them standing in the kitchen—Ziegfried, as tall and wide as a tree, and Sheba, tall and thin, with her beautiful long red hair and its thousands of wave-like curls. There would be cats all over the kitchen, and birds on top of the fridge, and Edgar the goat standing by the wood stove, with his sleepy sad eyes and goatee beard.

  “But why are you in Japan, my dear? Don’t you know of the earthquake and tsunami, and the meltdown of the nuclear plants? It is so terrible.”

  “Yes, I do. I am here to get help for someone, and then I will leave. I am fine, really I am.”

  There was a long pause. I knew they were discussing things, and I knew that Ziegfried would be anxious to talk to me. I needed to talk to him.

  “Alfred, you must leave right away. It is terrible what is happening. You must leave, or you will become terribly ill. It is all in the news. Please leave right away. Please tell me that you will.”

  “I will. I promise. I just need to get help for someone.”

  “Yes, you are always helping someone. Why does that not surprise me? I had once thought that you were just a young explorer, a most courageous one, but I know now that you are actually a warrior for peace. You have gone out into the world to give help where it is needed. Do you know that I am so proud of you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “We will wait for you then, darling boy, but you must promise me you will leave Japan immediately. Not a moment later.”

  “I will. I promise. Do you think I could speak with Ziegfried, too?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. He is here, jumping up and down waiting for me to hand you over to him.” Sheba laughed. “He is more of a boy than you are. He is such a boy.” She laughed again. “But he is anxious to speak to you also, so I will pass you over to him. My heart sails with you, my dear Alfred. My heart sails always with you. And I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  “Please remember at all times, our young warrior for peace, that virtue is its own reward.”

  “What? Okay.”

  “Will you remember that?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  I found it odd for her to say that to me just then, but I put it away in the back of my mind for later. I took a deep breath when she passed the phone over, and there was another pause. I was pleased I had managed to keep my voice from shaking too much, and glad that Sheba had not read my cards, or dreamt about me, because, with what I was planning to do, I wouldn’t have wanted to know what she would have discovered.

  When Ziegfried came to the phone, it was completely different. It was like shifting from your heart to your mind. I loved Ziegfried every bit as much as Sheba, but where she was loving and gentle, he was logical and practical. In some ways they were probably the perfect match. She was like a poet, and he was like a scientist. Being around the two of them at the same time was sheer magic.

  On the phone Ziegfried was all practicality. If you didn’t know that behind his voice there was a warm and loving face, you might sometimes think you were talking to a drill sergeant in the army.

  “Al. Sheba says you are in Japan.”

  “Yes. I just got here, but I’m leaving right away.”

  “Good. Get out of there immediately. It’s a dangerous place, Al. Try to stay indoors. Try to avoid the air.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why are you there? Didn’t you hear about the tsunami?”

  “Yes, I saw it.”

  “You saw it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you hit by it?”

  “Yes, but I’m okay. The sub is okay.”

  “Are you certain? Have you checked for leaks? Yes, of course you have checked for leaks, but are you certain she is all right? Are you certain she is still seaworthy?”

  “I’m certain she is. But I need to help somebody else who is trapped in a ship that went down. That’s why I’m here. I need to get scuba gear and go and help him.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Ziegfried?”

  Now his voice changed. And right from the beginning I didn’t like the sound of it.

  “Lay it out for me, Al. Tell me everything. Be as detailed as you can, and try not to leave anything out. I’ll interrupt you only when I need to know a specific detail.”

  “Okay.” So I did. I started at the very beginning, describing as much as I could, as quickly as I could. Ziegfried interrupted only a few times, such as when I told him Sensei’s age, or how high he could jump, or the depth the freighter was sitting at, or how many holds she had, and how big they were. It took such a long time that I was tired when I finished. The weight of carrying Sensei’s life in my hands was wearing me out. But when I finally finished, stopped to catch my breath, and waited to hear Ziegfried’s response, there wasn’t one, just another long pause.

  “Ziegfried?”

  “I’m thinking, Al.”

  So I waited. But it felt like forever. And when Ziegfried finally did respond, his words were very difficult to hear.

  “Al?”

  “Yes?”

  “Al. He’s a hundred years old. Or so you think.”

  “I think he is.”

  “You just turned seventeen.”

  “I know.”

  “Al. This is not going to be easy for you to accept.”

  “What?”

  “You have to let him go.”

  “What? What do you mean?” I was shocked.

  “You have to let him go.”

  “What do you mean, ‘let him go’? Do you mean not try to save him?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I didn’t think I was hearing clearly. “I don’t understand. Are you saying I shouldn’t go back there and try to save him?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “But … he’s a wonderful old man. And he’s in great shape. I don’t get it.” I was really upset.

  “Al. Let’s say he really is a hundred years old, and let’s say he is in incredible shape, as you say he is. I have no doubt that is true. Even so, it would be highly unlikely that he’d make it to a hundred and ten, in the best of circumstances.”

  “But—”

  “People just don’t live that long, Al. There might be a handful of people on the Earth who have lived that long.”

  “So?”

  “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. He has lived his life. The risks you are considering taking are simply too great. Chances are that neither of you would come out of it alive; that’s simply a risk I cannot let you take. It’s not right, Al. It’s not fair. It would be different if he were a lot younger, you know? Even then it’s debatable whether the risk would be worth it; it seems like a pretty slim shot to me. And you’d be throwing your life away in the remote hope of saving someone who has already lived more than most people ever dream of living, and who in the very best scenario might live a few more years, that is, if he is still alive. You must consider that all you might find is a floating corpse. It’s just not a fair trade, Al.”

  “But …” I didn’t like what I was hearing. Even more, I didn’t like that it was Ziegfried who was saying it. I was struggling not to feel betrayed. In my mind’s eye I saw Sensei sitting inside the hull, in the dark, breathing less than a human normally needs to breathe because he has slowed his pulse and is saving his energy. He’s conserving it all in an act to survive. And there is only one possible hope that he will survive: if I go back.

  “Al …? Al …?”

  “Yes?”

  “Let me ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “What would you think if you saw two other people caught in this situation: an old man in the very final years of his life, and a young man full of purpose, with his whole life ahead of him? What would you advise, knowin
g that chances were the young man would not come out of it—that neither the young man nor the old man would come out of it. What would you advise: to let both perish, or to save the one you knew you could save?”

  I tried to think about it. That seemed different to me. My mind was beginning to understand what Ziegfried was saying, but my heart wouldn’t accept it.

  “What would you advise, Al?”

  Now it was my turn to pause for a long time before answering.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Al?”

  “Yes?”

  “You and I have an agreement.”

  Oh, no! I knew what he was going to say.

  “We have an agreement, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have an agreement that you get to decide where to sail your sub, and you can sail it all over the world as you do, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But that I have the right to ground the sub whenever I feel that you are not safe, right? … Right? … Al. Answer me.”

  “Yes. Right. We do.”

  “I’m sorry, Al, I really and truly am, but I am now officially grounding the sub …”

  “What? No!”

  “She’s grounded, Al. She’s grounded. I’m sorry.”

  “No!”

  “I’m going to send you a plane ticket, Al. You are exhausted, and you are in a dangerous place. I’ll send you a ticket. They don’t know who you are. They don’t know your name … Just change your appearance.”

  “No …”

  “You’re worn out. I can hear it in your voice. You’re in a country that is flooding with radioactive particles. A large part of the population is getting sick. It’s not safe where you are, Al. You need to come home and rest. You can leave the sub on the bottom of a harbour somewhere; we can come back for it at another time. And if we can’t find her, we’ll build another one. It’s time to come home, Al. It’s time to come home.”

  The strain of all the pressure and the strain of the disappointment I was now feeling were too much for me and I started to cry. I just couldn’t help it.

  “I can’t come home. I can’t leave Hollie and Seaweed behind.” I rubbed the tears from my eyes but couldn’t keep my voice from breaking. “What if I meet you in Okinawa. Would that be okay?”

  There was another pause.

  “Would that be okay? Ziegfried?”

  “Okinawa?”

  “Yes. We could sail there in just a few days. And if you could come, then we could refit the sub enough for me to sail it home. Don’t you think that could work?”

  “I don’t know, Al.”

  “I could rest up there.”

  “Let me look at the map.”

  “Okay.”

  I took a deep breath and wiped my eyes. Katsuo was staring at me from the doorway. I frowned and tried hard to get my emotions under control.

  “Al?”

  “Yes?”

  “Okay. I will meet you in Okinawa. It’s pretty far away from the mainland; it should be safe enough. But you’ve got to get out of there now. You must leave right away. Okay?”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “And, Al?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have to let the old man go.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “It’s exceedingly unlikely he’s still alive, Al. You must accept that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I need to hear you say it, Al.”

  “Say what?”

  “That you will not attempt this rescue; that you will honour our agreement. I need to hear you promise me that you will honour the agreement we made three years ago. I need to hear you say it.”

  “I will.”

  “Say it, Al. Then I will know that we understand each other.”

  “I will honour our agreement.”

  “And you will not attempt this rescue.”

  “I will not attempt this rescue.”

  “Okay, Al. I’ll book a flight to Japan right away. I’ll try to get there by next week. Shouldn’t be too difficult to do that; I don’t imagine too many people are flying to Japan right now. Call Sheba as soon as you get to Okinawa, okay? She’ll tell you where to meet me. For now, let’s say we’ll meet in a week’s time on the northern tip of Okinawa. There’s a place called Cape Heda. I’ll meet you there on the beach, or the cliff, or whatever is there, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And if either of us can’t make it for any reason, we’ll get in touch through Sheba, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “All right, Al. Now, please get inside the sub and get the heck out of there.”

  “I will. I will right away.”

  “Good. We’re thinking of you, Al. We send you all our love.”

  “I love you, too.”

  After I hung up I rubbed my face and tried to shake the emotion out of my head. Katsuo kept staring at me as if I were some sort of secret agent, but Yoshi looked sympathetic. He didn’t try to hide that he had overheard me and that I was upset. He gripped my arm when I thanked him for the use of the phone. I made my way towards the door.

  “Sometimes we must accept what we don’t want to accept,” he said. “I know what this is like.”

  I nodded my head and stared into his face. He was a very kind man. I wondered if Sensei had been anything like him when he was his age.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was after midnight when I wandered back to the dockyard. At every step I felt a weight on my shoulders. My loyalty to Ziegfried was rock solid. He had believed in me at the most important time in my life; it was because of him that I was not pulling lobster and crab from the sea with my grandfather. Without Ziegfried I would never have met Hollie, Seaweed, or Sheba. I would never have sailed the world in my own submarine. I would only have known the sea from the side of a fishing boat, day after day, with my cranky old grandfather nagging me for not doing everything exactly right. I loved my grandfather, but he was cranky and impossible to please. Ziegfried helped me escape that life, and I could never forget that.

  So, in a way, it wasn’t really my decision. I wasn’t abandoning Sensei; I was just obeying the order of the only one who had the right to give me an order. So it was out of my hands. Probably Sensei was dead now, as Ziegfried had suggested. It would be wrong to throw my life away trying to rescue him, especially when I had never scuba dived before, didn’t know what I was doing, and would almost certainly kill myself, and maybe Sensei, too, if he wasn’t already dead.

  As I continued towards the dockyard, I tried to accept it, and put a good face on it, or at least one I could live with. And, for a little while, I actually did. I raised my head and looked around and picked up my pace. Hollie and Seaweed were waiting for me. I would join them inside the sub and we would head for Okinawa, where we would meet up with Ziegfried in just a week. How wonderful that would be. That was the nicest thought, the one I tried to hold on to.

  As I crossed over the street, an unusual advertisement in the window of a small corner store caught my eye. A young girl was reaching up to touch the face of an old man, likely her grandfather. There was love in their faces. I stopped. I couldn’t help staring at the photo, and my eyes flooded with tears again. Sensei was alone in the dark, in a sunken ship. If he had family somewhere they would never see him again. They would never know what had happened to him. He was spending his last days alone, in solitude and darkness.

  In spite of everything Ziegfried had said, in truth, it was my decision that Sensei was being abandoned. I was the one who would have to live with that for the rest of my life. Suddenly, without even thinking about it, I turned around and started to walk back the way I had come. I felt a shiver run down my spine, because I knew what I was going to do. I felt like two people now: the one obeying Ziegfried, and the one who wasn’t. The second one wasn’t thinking about it much, because if I thought about it, I might just end up sitting down on the corner and doing nothing. All I knew was that if I gave up on Sensei, I�
�d be walking away from everything I believed in. I just couldn’t do that.

  So I made my way back past Yoshi’s house, and on to Hitoshi’s house. It was the middle of the night now. The streets were still deserted, and the lights were out in the houses. I went along silently, and never before in my life had I felt so alone. I was coming to a house with an invitation to rob it. How crazy was that? No matter that I was trying to save someone. No matter that I had been given permission in the very oddest way … I still had to sneak into someone’s house and steal his equipment. The thought of it made my skin crawl.

  When I found Hitoshi’s house I edged through the gate where we had been before, went past the door and searched for the basement window that Hitoshi had unlocked. Would he have gone to bed by now? I sure hoped so.

  There were no lights on. The house, like the city, was as dark as a tomb. When I found the window, I gave it a gentle push and it opened. I slipped off my sneakers, bent down, and slid my body backwards inside the room. I moved as slowly and silently as I could. I knew Hitoshi meant for me to do this; what else could he have meant? And yet I couldn’t help wondering if I had misunderstood. If he woke, I wasn’t sure what I would do. Would he come and confront me, or pretend he didn’t hear? What if I had misunderstood, and he was shocked to see me? What would I do, apologize and try to explain? Try to escape through the window, or make a dash for the door? I didn’t know. I just hoped he was a deep sleeper.

  The window was high above the floor. It wasn’t going to be easy to lift the scuba gear out. Once my feet touched the floor, I crouched down and tried to see everything in the room, but it was too dark. I needed to put the light on. So I gently pushed the door closed and flipped on the light switch. I listened carefully. The loudest sound was the beating of my heart.

  On the floor were tanks, hoses, masks, snorkels and fins. There were also other pieces of equipment that I recognized as part of a diver’s gear but didn’t really know. There seemed to be three sets of everything, so I carefully chose one complete set, with the biggest tank. The smaller pieces I was able to push through the window by standing on my tiptoes, but for the tank I had to move a chair, stand on it, hold the window open with one hand, and slide the tank out. That was really difficult, and made a grating noise. I grimaced and held my breath, waiting and listening for any sound inside the house. There wasn’t any. If Hitoshi had heard, he wasn’t doing anything about it.