by Kevin Olson
Mike shook his head. “I’ve read newspaper stories about the Green Lama and his war on organized crime in the city. But I’m just a cook with an old college football injury. I could never do half the things that fellow does with a leg like this. Besides I’m no fighter, today notwithstanding. I just got lucky against you, Mister Turner.”
“That’s just what your enemy wants you to believe,” Sun said. “He wants you out of the way, so that you cannot interfere with his plans for the city, the plans carried out by his personal army.”
“I wish I could help you, but I think you’ve got the wrong man. I’ve told you, I’m just a cook. I don’t know anything about criminals, let alone about this Black Ring of yours. I wish I could help in some way, but like I said…”
“…you’re only a cook,” Sun said. “I wish I could just accept that and walk away. But I can’t. The Black Ring is a group of killers, murderers and thieves bent on controlling this city through criminal means. Five people are already dead and you may be the only person that can help us stop them, but only if you snap out of these false memories. You’re not Mike Washington. There is no Mike Washington.”
“I wish I could help. I really do. It sounds like Mister Turner and you have quite a fight ahead of you. But I don’t have anything that I can tell you and I’m certainly not the right man to recruit to any fight. Whoever you think I might be, this Dumont fellow, the Green Lama, whatever, I am afraid you will be quite disappointed.”
Turner cleared his throat. Sun turned to him and angrily said, “What is it, Perry?”
Turner pointed to the shelf. “Interesting collection you have here, Mister Washington. Lost Horizon, Utopia, lots of religious tracks from all around the world. Interesting reading for a small time cook.”
“I am a very spiritual person,” Washington said. “I believe there’s a lot more to this world than what we can just see with our eyes. But that doesn’t make me some kind of Buddhist Lama, whatever color you choose to make him.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your day to day life,” Sun said. “But we’ve looked long and hard for you. I saw today a man trained in secret fighting arts yet to be seen in this town. You aren’t just some cook, I know that. And if I know that and the Black Ring knows that we know that, your life could be in very serious danger.”
“I doubt any set up they create will end as positively as ours did,” Turner added.
“I’m just a man,” Washington said. “I wish I could do more, be more, but I am who I am. And that’s Michael Washington.”
“But…”
Sun threw up a hand and cut off Turner’s argument.
“I understand where you’re coming from, Mister Washington. I’m sure our argument sounds crazy to you, but I hope you will come around in time.”
She reached into her handbag and withdrew a small rectangle of paper. Washington took her card, a simple form with her name, position with the Secret Service and a local phone number on it.
Washington stared at it a moment, before he took it and slid it in his shirt pocket, next to his glasses. Realizing he hadn’t put the twin glass frames back on, he quickly withdrew them from his pocket and put them over his eyes. He stopped short as he realized the lenses did nothing to bring the world any closer in focus. He quickly raised and lowered the glasses as he looked at Sun. Glasses or not, she appeared the same.
He said nothing about the sudden revelation, not sure what it meant. Could it be that they were telling the truth, that he wasn’t Mike Washington at all? Or it could just mean his eye doctor was stealing his money, not unheard of in this day and age.
Sun walked back to her partner as Turner held open the door. She turned back to Washington. “If you change your mind, Mister Washington, don’t be afraid to call. I have a receiver in my office and that’s the direct line. An answering service will pick up if I’m not around and pass the message on to me as soon as possible. If you know anything, remember anything, you can tell us there.”
“Thank you,” Washington said. “I’m sorry if I wasted either or your time. I wish I could help you find this Green Lama.”
Turner started to speak again, but Sun cut him off with another hand gesture. She gave Washington one last smile before she ushered her partner through the door.
Washington closed his eyes. Sun’s words echoed through his head, all too familiar. He didn’t know why, but he knew he should know this Green Lama, or at least know where to find him. Washington wondered what was wrong with him.
With a rolling sense of uneasy resting deep in the pit of his stomach, he returned to the kitchen to start his breakfast.
Despite the visit from the Secret Service agents and the unease they brought with them, Washington continued his morning ritual as he did every other day. He ate two eggs cooked overhard with a slice of lightly buttered toast and a cup of cool milk. From there he read the morning newspaper from cover to cover. After that, he went to the window and loaded the twin birdfeeders that sat on the sill. He pulled his chair around and in front of the window to see what kind of birds he might attract to the feeder.
After he grew tired of watching his avian friends, he returned to the latest addition to his library, Allan Quatermain’s first journal of his adventures, aptly titled King Solomon’s Mines. He found the account a bit preposterous, but modern biographers were nothing if not overwrought in their prose.
It reminded him a bit of the writing of his old friend Foster, but for the life of him, he couldn’t quite recall exactly what old friend his mind might be remembering. He couldn’t think of any Fosters at work at the restaurant and he certainly didn’t know any authors.
With work looming closer, he rose from his chair and returned to the kitchen to make an early lunch, his last meal before a nearly twelve hour shift. He wiped down the pan on the stove and lathered butter on two slices of bread. Between them, he cut and placed a layer of cheese before he brought the entire sandwich to the stove to cook.
As he flipped the grilled cheese sandwich with a spatula, he heard something from down the hall. Usually his neighbors didn’t come around much at this time of day. Most were at work and those who weren’t tended to do most of their work at night. They were still asleep in the middle of the morning.
He felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck as an ominous sense of dread fell over him. He knew the sound came from an attacker; just the type of figure that Sun warned him might be coming. He pulled the grilled cheese off the stove, not wanting to let it burn.
If these men were as skilled as the Secret Service agents indicated, he knew they would waste no time now. They wouldn’t risk giving him a chance to run. They would come from the door and the window, all poised to strike him down without a second thought.
Despite knowing they were coming, he remained strangely calm. He slid a spatula under the grilled cheese and flipped it onto a plate. He picked up the plate as though he was ready to move to the next room. He bent down and grabbed the frying pan, as if to move it back onto the stove.
Instead he turned in a sudden twist. He hurled the pan straight through the patio door. Glass rained down on his victim before the plate thudded into the skull of an assassin dressed all in black. The strike dropped the attacker off the window sill, tumbling the single story to the ground.
Washington walked to the window, unsure of how he knew the man was there let alone incapacitated him with a common household item. He instead focused on the man’s outfit: a tight mask over his face, a loose-fitting gi and the tabi of the ninja, the silent Japanese assassins. He thought back to the thump in the hall. If these men are truly ninjas they are surely not making them like they once did.
He wasn’t sure where that thought came from, but Washington realized it wasn’t his. It was someone else, lurking in his brain, someone that knew how to fight.
Washington barely av
oided the attack by the other ninja that lurked outside. A throwing blade flew toward his skull, but he ducked inside just in time for it to whisk past toward the ground.
He stumbled back into the stove and found the teapot, still warm from earlier in the day. His fingers wrapped around the metal pot as he heard the crash of his door falling inwards. He turned to see three other men, dressed just like the other two assassins, which across his living room.
The other ninja came in through the window and attacked him with a long sword, a Japanese katana. Washington barely dove out of the way, striking the ground hard with teapot still in hand. The sword sliced clear through his counter tops like butter, an almost impossibly sharp blade. Washington knew he couldn’t survive a strike from it.
Say the words.
The command echoed through Mike Washington’s skull, but he didn’t know from where. He only knew these men wanted him dead and he wasn’t the fighter Sun or Turner claimed. He was just a cook, a normal man thrust into a situation he could never hope to survive. He wasn’t something more, wasn’t someone that could stand up to injustice.
Say the words.
The command echoed inside him again, spoken in his own words, his own voice. He knew they were true. He knew that they were his only chance for survival, but the very thought of them scared them. To say them out loud invited catastrophe, perhaps even death.
Death by sword or death by action, only you can choose. Say the words.
The ninja loomed large over him, a menacing figure in the black of pure evil. No good existed in this man’s heart, only a single minded urge to fulfill his master’s wishes. He would not stop until Mike was dead.
The sword sliced through his counter top…
He just didn’t realize that Mike was already dying. With a sob, he closed his eyes, opened his mouth and screamed.
“Om mani padme hum!”
His eyes flashed open but gone was the fear of Mike Washington. He leapt to his feet landing on the heels of both legs. The pain in his knee was vanished along with a simple cook. He was not Mike Washington. He had never been Mike Washington. He was something more, something powerful, something good and pure that this city needed.
He was the Green Lama and he would not die this day.
He hurled the pot out and took the ninja by surprise. The blow clubbed the assassin in the skull. The Lama used the momentary distraction to charge forward and deliver a strike to the man’s heart. He fell in a heap, instantly paralyzed by the heart punch. With a little bit more applied force, he could very well have died.
Fortunately even against an assassin, the Green Lama was a man of peace, not a killer.
He could hear movement from above. These assassins were not alone. They knew who he was and wanted to offer him no chance at escape. But if they thought to catch him off guard, they would be sadly mistaken.
He slowly bent down and retrieved the beaten assassin’s weapon. The Lama recognized it as a ninjato, a traditional short sword used by the shadow warriors of feudal Japan. It would serve his purposes in place of his usual gear.
The Green Lama closed his eyes and concentrated. He listened, but more he felt, everything around him. He could feel the gentle flow of wind against the window. He could hear the gentle flow of wind against the windowsill. He felt the reverberations of tiny feet as mice scurried beneath the floor boards. And he could almost see the assassin’s movements above, all in his mind’s eye.
He drove the blade straight up into the thin ceiling. It passed easily through plaster and week wood. The blade sliced up and through the back of the would-be assassin’s foot. It severed the man’s posterior tibial artery, a bloody wound but non-fatal if treated quickly.
The Lama left the kitchen and his apartment. He found the single phone in the hallway and quickly dialed the operator.
“We need an ambulance. A man has been stabbed.” He gave the address and immediately hung up.
Ninjato still in hand, he climbed the stairs to the next floor. The door to the apartment above was broken, shattered by a sharp kick. The Lama stepped inside and quickly made his way to the back of the apartment, the area he knew was directly above where he struck.
He found the assassin bleeding profusely on the floor of the bedroom. The Green Lama walked toward the injured man. The assassin weakly raised his blade, but the Lama batted it away with his own. He bent over the assassin and held his blade to the killer’s throat.
“I know not if a killer like you fears his own death. But I am sure you know that if treated correctly, your wound may not be fatal. I can spare your life, if you answer my questions. Will you help me?”
The assassin said nothing.
The Lama brought the blade lower and grabbed the man’s hand. A never pinch on the killer’s wrist immobilized the limb, but would leave him with full sensation. The Lama brought the blade down and sliced it into the assassin’s pointer finger just above the cuticle. He quickly snapped the nail from the finger.
“I am a man of peace, but I am not a happy man. Your kind have cost me much this day. I will do what is necessary to learn the identity of your master.”
The Green Lama moved the finger over to the assassin’s middle finger. “It will be your nails first. After that, I will start on each fingertip. I have more than enough medicinal training to keep you from bleeding out. I can make the pain last for hours.”
“You’re bluffing,” the assassin said.
Though he knew the killer to be right, the Lama kept his face impassive. He sliced down into the man’s middle finger. The nail popped off even easier than the first.
“I don’t bluff,” the Green Lama said. “Are you with the Black Ring?”
He brought the blade to the next finger.
“Yes! Yes! I work for the Ring! But I don’t know nothing else. They just tell me who I should kill.”
“Your weapon says otherwise. No common American thug carries a Japanese short sword. Where did you get it?”
“A warehouse on the pier. Lot 167. But it’s nothing, just a place to meet and get the goods. Our boss comes in with a black mask. We don’t know his name or nothing, not even what he looks like without that thing. He just pays us, we do the work and it’s done.”
“What was your mission today? Did you want me dead? Are you here to kill me?”
The assassin shook his head. “The boss wanted you captured, tied and bound and dropped at the warehouse. We was only supposed to off you as a last resort.”
“Whoever is your master that was his first mistake.”
The Green Lama reached his free hand to the assassin’s throat. He raised two fingers to strike, but turned his hands as he quickly drove them down. The blow struck a nerve cluster between collar and shoulder. The assassin’s eyes rolled back as he fell instantly unconscious.
He heard the sound of sirens approaching. The first were already stopping in front of the building, police and ambulance. They were finally here, good time for the local constabulary. He used his shirt to wipe the blade free of prints. He dropped it at the assassin’s side. The Lama stepped over the killer and walked toward the apartment’s rear window.
While a stairwell served as an emergency exit down, the Green Lama knew he would never make it all the way down without the police finding him. He could not afford to be exposed in such a way. He needed another way out.
It was a ten feet leap between this building and the next. For a normal man, the distance might be too great. But for the Green Lama, nothing was insurmountable. It was just another obstacle and far from the longest leap he ever made.
He took just a moment to measure the jump, stepped back several paces and then hurled his body forward as fast as he could run. He threw his body through the open window and out into the open air of the alley. His jump took him straight across to an exterior
railing, an emergency staircase designed in case of fire. He landed on it, walked up to the window and tried the latch. It slid open. He heard no sign of anyone inside. The tenants were either at work or out looking for work.
He made his way quickly to the front door, let himself out and started his way down the stairs. He walked out onto the street and walked past his old apartment. He gave the cops on scene only a cursory glance, looking like nothing more than any other spectator as they walked past the scene of the crime.
The police never saw him and would never suspect his presence. After all, the only lead they had was a man named Mike Washington. And Mike Washington was dead, if he every truly was. The Green Lama felt a sense of loss, a ghost of something simple evaporated into the mists of memory. Mike may not have been real, but he was a true soul, something lost to the Lama with the return of his memory.
Mike Washington was gone and whoever created him, whoever took away the Lama’s mind in the first place, would pay.
fff
Nestled against his side, Scarlet’s long red locks fell over his chest as she slowly ran her hand across his thick, heavily muscled gut. Lei Mei worked higher, rubbing the tight knots from his shoulder. The newest girl, the waifish blond Amber, caressed him in a more intimate manner.
Vong Den, master of the Black Ring, took it all in with detached disinterest. Normally his mind would only be focused on his own pleasure during his afternoon ritual. Instead he waited, anxious for news of the missing Green Lama.
The newest of his lieutenants, a local named Baxter, entered the far end of the chamber. The young man’s arrival over his more seasoned commanders bode ill for the results of the hunt. Nor did Baxter’s appearance project welcome news; he looked uncomfortable, scared at being in his master’s presence.