The Orsinni Contracts

by Bill Cariad

  Maria watched him turn away and begin his walk to the door. She was puzzled. His voice had sounded flat; his eyes had revealed nothing of his thoughts; and he hadn’t said a word about the solo session he had just spent two hours watching. It was exactly, she reminded herself now, what Tanaka had often done. Back then, even Tanaka wouldn’t always explain why. Well, she told herself now, she wasn’t about to ask Kimoto what he had thought of her session, but she was going to have the shower. She went to the office and gathered up her belongings.

  Two hours later; having showered and changed back into her clothes; having sat with the chattering Kiri and Hanako Kimoto; and a silent Tanzen Kimoto; having telephoned Tony and arranged to be picked up, she stood now with Kimoto in the vestibule she had used to take down four members of the Hip Sing Tong.

  “What time tomorrow?” asked Kimoto, his tone polite, his eyes unreadable.

  “The same time, please.” replied Maria, consciously matching his tone.

  Kimoto smiled, then turned away without saying another word. Maria heard her own exasperated sigh in the silence of the vestibule before she opened the street door. She wouldn’t be surprised, she told herself, if Tanaka had suggested Kimoto should attempt to annoy her by behaving in such an inscrutable Oriental fashion.

  Wrapped up in her thoughts, Maria was again uncommunicative on the drive back to the Waldorf. The thoughts were a mix of the positive and the negative. In the positive column, Albright was on board with her plan; her Plaza items were in place; her use of a dojo would be of benefit ; and Sergio wouldn’t be arriving in New York to complicate matters. In the negative column; The Lucchese kidnap-handover problem remained to be dealt with; Sergio was possibly shaping up to become a personal problem; and she didn’t know what would become of what Tommaso had described as a fledgling relationship. Tony got her to the hotel just before four in the afternoon, and, after confirming tomorrow’s timings with him, she watched him drive away whilst telling herself that she should have included her driver in the positive column.

  She checked at reception, and picked up her uncle’s message: Dining this evening with some people from the Getty Museum. See you at breakfast... usual time! She actually felt relieved to discover she would be on her own this evening, and went to her suite with the thought that she would find something to watch on television before changing for dinner. Another early night would do her no harm whatsoever.

  At 7-30am; on her sixth day in New York; her long hair styled back and held by a silver clasp; her feet inside red high heeled shoes; wearing a black silk shirt-blouse over flared white linen slacks; Maria Orsinni sat down to her fifth Waldorf breakfast. She was alone. She was also hungry so she didn’t wait for her uncle. She began eating her breakfast whilst telling herself that Canizzaro would be with her at any moment. Halfway through her meal, still amused, she asked one of the waiters to check on her missing dining companion. She was finishing her breakfast when she was told that her uncle apparently had not returned to the hotel the previous evening.

  Maria went to the reception desk. No message had been left for her. She persuaded the receptionist to have her uncle’s room checked, and the reported result confirmed Canizzaro’s missing status. She was instantly angry with herself; she had no idea where Canizzaro could be. They had made no arrangement to cover something such as this happening. The immediately following realization that she didn’t even know where Tommaso and Stanhope were staying, added frustration to her anger. At her behest, the receptionist phoned the Getty museum but was explaining even as he did so that it was too early for anyone to be at the other end of the line. Which proved to be the case. Telling herself that someone would have called had there been a serious problem, Maria rushed outside to find her waiting taxi driver.

  Following yesterday’s order of proceedings, Maria entered the Plaza hotel at 9-45am. She bypassed the reception desk and went straight to The Terrace Room. She spent time there establishing her cover story; miming the appearance of a painstaking organizer busy making notes for future use towards her forthcoming event. Eventually seen by a member of staff, and receiving a friendly and understanding wave, Maria decided enough was enough. On the way back out she made a perfectly natural stop at one of the ladies toilets. Wherein, she was pleased to discover, all was as she had left it. Thirty minutes after leaving him, she was back in Tony’s taxi.

  Still adhering to yesterday’s order of events, Tanzen Kimoto acknowledged her entry bow of respect at just after eleven in the morning. Maria instantly sensed that the order of events was about to change even before he politely greeted her. She returned his greeting and saw that today his aura was no longer benign.

  “Your Giri is where you left it,” said Kimoto, smiling, his eyes again unreadable as he added, “I will wait for you. There is no need to hurry.”

  Maria made no reply, and gave no sign of having understood the meaning behind his last few words. She was silently translating those words as she walked towards his office. I will wait for you, meant that not only would she be fighting him, she would be expected to take the role of his attacker. There is no need to hurry was code for take time to prepare yourself. She made the obligatory toilet stop before changing into the Giri, thinking that she was about to attack the master who had taught Tanaka however many of the skills he had taught her. She was going up against an opponent whom Wan Lai-Tang had said would be very hard to impress. She stood for a moment; eyes closed; controlling her breathing; Tanaka’s voice in her head: Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

  Maria opened her eyes and smiled at the memory of Tanaka. She walked out into the dojo telling herself she was simply about to add to her experience, and silently pledging to Tanaka that she would not disgrace him.

  As he had done yesterday, noted Maria, Kimoto was standing in the centre of the dojo. What differed from yesterday was that he was standing on a dojo mat, one of several which he had obviously positioned to form a combat platform. Maria masked her surprise at the fact that he must have done this whilst she was in the office, but she hadn’t heard a sound! He stood now watching her, showing no signs of his exertions. She halted a few paces from him and couldn’t see a single bead of perspiration on his face.

  “You may attack when you are ready,” said Kimoto, quietly, standing perfectly still.

  Maria took one pace forward. Kimoto had, she noted, now paid her the compliment of making no reference to the disallowed use of full power for their fighting session. He had felt no need to do so; he knew that she knew the rules. He would now be expecting her respectful bow of understanding. Maria immediately broke the first rule of dojo sparring with an opponent by offering no acknowledgement to the invitation to fight within the rules. It would offend Kimoto, she knew, he was a traditionalist in this their field of martial arts. She hadn’t seen any sweat on his face earlier, but she saw the frown now.

  Her opponent would begin this encounter with a distinct advantage over and above his lifetime of knowledge, she reminded herself: He knew the only two masters she had trained with, and so knew that she would bring nothing to this session which could surprise him. Without preamble she began her attack using Tae kwon do, the Korean external martial art which places emphasis on kicking techniques. She did this simply to observe how her opponent moved to evade the variety of kicks she used. She moved up a combat gear in her head, stepping in close and switching to open-palm Muay Thai (Thai boxing) She did this to test his reaction times, which were as fast as she had expected them to be. She moved up another gear and switched to Wing Chun (Chinese external martial art based primarily on hand strikes) Wan Lai-Tang had told her that this fighting methodology she was now using was called Chi sau (sticky fingers) because hand and arm contact was sustained by both opponents as they fought. Just as she and Kimoto were doing now. The close quarter Wing Chun was not a style of fighting she would have attempted to use against so
meone with Kimoto’s knowledge had this been for real, but in a serious practice session like this it was useful to discover what worked, and what didn’t. Attack and defence moves were now being executed with blurring speed by four hands which seemed to become one, and eye contact was unavoidable when you were this close to an opponent. She saw the fierce concentration that even a master of Kimoto’s calibre was giving to this exchange, but she also saw that he wasn’t having any trouble defending himself. Which he successfully did, of course, but she wasn’t using full power and thought that she would have got through once had she been doing so.

  Time for some Orsinni trickery. She moved up another gear in her combat head. Still breathing easily, she disengaged from her opponent and stepped back. From then on everything happened at incredible speed. She adopted a Shotokan Karate sparring stance which she knew her knowledgeable opponent would recognize as a basic five singular attacks and defence counters exercise. Her opponent was already moving, her anticipated first attack producing the expected and controlled counter attack preceded by his equally anticipated traditional Kiai (shout), when she drove him back for a second by going straight into the fourth move of her decoy sequence. Abandoning the fifth Karate move even as his throat was emitting the sound of his Kiai, she seamlessly switched to Swari waza. (Aikido ground fighting technique) She dropped to one knee and her knuckle strike was delivered with great speed and controlled power to touch his kneecap with feather-light care but potentially damaging precision. Even as she made contact she was spinning away from the fast counter-move of her opponent’s elbow strike to her jaw. Thereafter throughout the session, she switched disciplines several times and he countered with ease everything she tried to use to get through his defences. She found herself flat on her back three times, and on six occasions had felt his finger tap a point of her body to indicate where she had exposed herself to serious injury, or even certain death. She was breathing heavily and feeling bruised when he finally stepped back and declared their session was over.

  They stood now facing one another as Maria began the process of winding down and dealing with the familiar remnants of practice session adrenalin. At this point in time she was thinking that Kimoto was just as annoying as Tanaka and Wan Lai-Tang. The man was just standing there with that serene looking expression on his face and his aura was again benign.

  “I will deal with your bruises,” said Kimoto, “when you return from the shower room. You will find a clean Giri beside the shower cubicle.”

  So obviously, thought Maria, they were not finished here today. Just as obvious was the fact that he was going to make her wait before he critiqued her performance. Suppressing her disappointment, tempered by the prospect of a hot shower, she left the dojo without making any reply. He probably just thinks Italians are bad mannered, she told herself with a hidden smile. She spent some time in the shower, allowing the hot water to work its magic on her muscles, checking her bruises and mulling over her practice performance in the dojo. She had learned a few things about the effectiveness of some of her moves, and of the weaknesses in other moves which needed to be strengthened. She didn’t think she had disgraced Tanaka.

  She returned to the dojo to discover an embarrassed looking Kimoto standing beside his wife, Kiri. The woman was putting what appeared to be finishing touches to the arrangement of plates of food on a small table which had been erected to stand outside the office doorway. Drawing nearer to this surprise, a glance at Kimoto’s face told Maria that, like herself, he had probably visualised sitting on a dojo mat opposite a recent opponent to analyze their practice session. A glance at Kiri Kimoto’s face told Maria that the woman was still saying thank you for the return of my daughter and that she had over-ruled her husband.

  Ignoring Tanzen Kimoto’s silence, Maria smiled at her diminutive hostess and bowed with her spoken thanks for such a thoughtful act. It was one thirty in the afternoon and Maria was hungry. Over the hour which followed, she did justice to the meal as she happily listened to Kiri Kimoto’s chatter and smiled into the eyes of the woman’s beaten husband.

  At three in the afternoon, her eyes closed, Maria sat on a wooden chair in the centre of the dojo. Kiri Kimoto had gone, along with the detritus from her impromptu lunch table. Slowly circling the chair upon which she was perched, Tanzen Kimoto was using his hands as the medium for his powerful Chi which was restoring her bruised body parts. Tanaka had ministered to her in this fashion many times in the past, healing wounds and bruises as soon after a training session as was possible. So she was unafraid of what Kimoto was doing to her now, and was grateful for this restorative attention.

  “You are a formidable fighter, Maria Orsinni,” said Kimoto.

  Maria opened her eyes. Kimoto’s tone of voice was signalling that she was finally about to receive her critique.

  “When added to your current arsenal of skills within the external arts,” resumed Kimoto, “your speed and power, even at this stage of your development, will defeat most opponents. To increase that speed, and to strengthen that power, you must further your understanding and development of the disciplines, and their relevant techniques, which bridge the external and internal arts.”

  Maria understood. Kimoto was referring to those disciplines which Tanaka had first introduced her to, and which Wan Lai-Tang was continuing to teach her. As if reading her mind, the man with the healing hands was quietly continuing.

  “Wan Lai-Tang has permitted me to speak with you on this matter,” Kimoto formally declared, “The process of developing your Nei Gung (internal power) can be compared to a Samurai sword blade. Such a blade is made by seamlessly folding multiple layers of steel together. Each layer of steel, separately forged by a master sword-maker, is combined with previous layers to achieve strength and durability. How does that feel now?” he suddenly asked.

  Maria, still focused on what he had been saying, realized that he had now finished powering his Chi into her body and was standing back to ask her how she felt. She stood up and loosely flexed her muscles, and felt none of the earlier aches and pains.

  “I feel good,” she replied, “Arigato.”

  Kimoto bowed his head slightly, then smiled knowingly as he indicated they should finally use a dojo mat to continue the critique. Maria returned his smile and together they sank into the lotus position and peacefully faced one another across the mat.

  “You are still young, Maria Orsinni,” resumed Kimoto without further preamble, “and are not yet the fully forged Samurai sword-blade.”

  Maria swallowed this bluntly expressed statement without comment. Kimoto, she thought, was beginning to sound like Tanaka.

  “But you have already benefited,” resumed Kimoto, “from the sole and undivided attention of one master for seven years, and the teachings of Wan Lai-Tang for several months. Had I not been aware of this fact, and had this been the first time I had seen you, and the first time I had joined you in practice, I would have believed that I had witnessed the end result of ten, or even twelve years spent studying and practicing the martial arts.”

  Maria bowed her head to acknowledge his compliment, and felt good about all her training and hard work beginning to bear fruit. But Kimoto wasn’t finished, she realized.

  “My own early training and practice years were spent in China,” said Kimoto, “I followed that with years in Japan, before coming to this country. So I have seen many impressive practitioners of the martial arts. But only rarely have I seen one of those who are born with knowledge. Today, Maria Orsinni, I have been privileged to see another one.”

  Maria made no attempt to conceal her pride at hearing such a statement being made by a martial arts master such as Tanzen Kimoto. A statement which demanded a proper response.

  “Thank you for allowing me to practice with you today. And I am grateful for all your words of advice on how I should continue my journey to knowledge. I have been blessed with the best of guides si
nce I began the journey, and I will continue upon that journey strengthened by the encouragement you have given me today.”

  “Spoken like the Samurai which Tanaka rightfully calls you,” said Kimoto with a smile.

  Maria returned his smile, and bowed her head deeply to hide her pleasure, then raised her head at the sound of his voice and saw the frown.

  “There is little I can teach one such as you,” said Kimoto, “in the little time in which you have asked to have use of this dojo. Yet you mentioned something about... timing?”

  “In four days time,” explained Maria, “I must complete a task within a short time frame, which will require exceptional speed if I am to succeed.”

  “And you wish to practice the elements of speed and timing in the dojo?”

  “If you will allow me to.”

  “My wife no longer cries herself to sleep at nights because you returned our daughter to her. I will allow you to have whatever is in my power to grant.”

  “Grazie.”

  “This task you must perform. Does it again involve the Tongs?”

  “No.”

  “Does it involve,” asked Kimoto, “the kind of people against whom Tanaka told me you would be using your skills?”

  Maria recalled now she and Sergio together reaching the inescapable conclusion, confirmed now by Harry Albright, that Calendar’s crimes had been witnessed and covered up by those who protected him. “Yes, it does,” she firmly replied.

  “So your dependence upon speed and timing,” resumed Kimoto, “to successfully complete your task, by definition means that you will fail if these elements go wrong. In that event, what would happen to you?”

  “I would be taken by the people who protect my objective,” Maria briskly replied.