Assassin

Chapter Forty-Four

The Emirate

FUDO MYO-O WAS WIELDING THE SWORD OF INSTRUCTIVE wisdom and holding a coiled rope to bind any evildoers who failed to heed his message.

“He looks very powerful, Ichi-san,” Yasmin said to the sumo. He was lost in concentration and didn’t look up. She was draped in peacock blue silk. She plucked another bright green grape from the bunch she had brought into the garden, and asked, “Who is it, in the painting?”

They were sitting in Yasmin’s private meditation garden. Ichi had been working there every morning for some days now. He was putting the finishing touches on a painting. Yasmin had promised to smuggle it out to his beloved Michiko. The beautiful Yasmin had made a surprise appearance this morning, settling herself upon the marble bench and watching quietly while he painted.

“It is a rendering of Fudo Myo-o,” Ichi said, smiling. “I am pleased that you like it. I have great respect for the feminine eye.”

“Is Fudo your God?”

“One of them.”

Yasmin and Ichi spoke quietly. Discretion was always their habit, ever since the night he had first come to her here in the garden; the night he revealed her husband’s sexual betrayal with the treacherous Rose. They had to whisper because, even here in Yasmin’s most private garden, there was no privacy. Eyes and ears were everywhere.

Behind the thick stone walls of her opulent prison, Yasmin sometimes wondered if there was any privacy left at all, even within the walls of her own mind.

“You have many gods, Ichi-san?”

“Fudo is an old one,” Ichi said. “Since I was a boy. He is the patron saint of Budo. Budo in my country is the way of brave and enlightened activity. For the warrior, Fudo represents steadfastness and resolve. He who is immovable.”

“And, Myo-o?”

“Myo-o means ‘King of Light.’ ”

“So, Budo is—your religion?”

“Perhaps. Budo has three essential elements. The timing of heaven, the utility of the earth, and the harmonization of human beings. I suppose for some that is a kind of religion.”

He returned to his painting and the silence between them stretched out, languorous and comfortable. Morning sunlight dappled the garden with shadows. The scent of the climbing yellow jasmine was heavy, soporific. Yasmin would have loved to lay her head upon Ichi’s lap and drift away beyond her walls. But she could not. She had bad news.

“I have just heard from my husband, Ichi-san. His plane will shortly leave Suva Island. He will be here late in the evening.”

Ichi did not reply. He just absorbed. And harmonized.

“I am so sorry,” Yasmin said. “I thought we had more time.”

There were large elephant and camel caravans departing at first light the next day. Yasmin had arranged for Ichi to be smuggled outside the walls in one of many large baskets even now being stacked just inside the walls. Tonight, with the palace security forces once more under the ever-watchful eye of bin Wazir and his inner circle, the guards would be sure to check every container leaving the Blue Palace.

Ichi closed his eyes and lifted his head so that the sun struck him fully on his upturned face.

“Do not mistake my heart. It is steadfast. Another day of hope will come,” Ichi said. He opened his eyes. “Look. The light. It is still visible in the valley beyond the wall, is it not?”

“I will help you to escape. You will be one with your Michiko again, my dearest Ichi-san. I promise you.”

Ichi added brushstrokes, his touch like tiny wings batting here and there against the painting.

“How do you know when it is finished?” Yasmin asked, after a time. “The painting.”

Ichi looked up at her and smiled. He liked the question.

“You never finish,” he said. “You abandon it.”

The silence resumed. Finally, Yasmin rose to her feet and made as if to leave the garden. She stopped and looked at the gentle sumo, lost in his art and sorrow.

“Have the rikishi killed the American?” she asked him.

“We have been told to wait. Until your husband returns. The torture has not yet broken him. His body yields only pieces of secrets.”

“But you still take him the food I send?”

“Without it, he would starve.”

“I am sick to death of it. Prisons. Torture. All the killing.”

“It is just beginning. A great storm of death gathers here.”

“Shh—servants.”

Ichi returned to his painting, pretending to add a stroke just here and just there to the image of the fierce god Fudo Myo-o. Two young females appeared, dropping to their knees before Yasmin, their foreheads to the ground.

“Yes? Why have you disturbed me?” she demanded.

“A letter, Most Revered One. From the American. He begged us to bring it. He said that—that you would understand and not treat us harshly.”

“Give it.”

Yasmin took the envelope from the shaking hand of the servant and turned her back. The two young women rose silently and melted away into the shadows of a graceful archway. She opened the message with a fingernail and pulled out two handwritten pages. After reading them, she put a hand on Ichi’s enormous shoulder.

“Yes?” he said, turning from his painting.

“A farewell letter, Ichi-san, written to his wife—and children—oh—”

Ichi looked up and saw her tears.

He said, “I am sorry for your pain.”

“This is how you know your life is finished, Ichi-san.” she said, holding up the American’s scrawled letter to his loved ones. It is—like your painting. You abandon it.”

“Yes,” the sumo said, gathering himself up. “This American, he is a good man. He has suffered long enough.”

“Oh, God,” Yasmin said, hiding the letters in the folds of her robes, “Hasn’t everyone suffered enough?”