Chapter 35

By the way, just after I started lessons with Nakamura-san, Malcolm left us. That was three years ago. Cyn was getting boring. Imagine that. Teach a guy everything he needs to know about pleasing a woman and he leaves. Cyn missed him ... about a minute after he stepped on the airplane, she was trolling.

I do have to admit ... she’s a past master at fishing in the male pool. For awhile it was officers from the base but we moved. Sasebo had taught me everything they could and sensei suggested Osaka. The Gracie school taught Street Fighting. I was formal and Street is use every advantage against an opponent. Six later months my new instructor recommended The Ninja Training Dojo in Kyoto.

“If you had come to us untrained in the basics, we would have kept you longer. You knew what to do ... you needed to learn to explode. You did,” He grinned. “Time to learn sneaky. You can study that in Kyoto.”

Kyoto taught me how to walk ... and all this time I thought I knew how. I thought I was fairly silent ... but. Sensei took the class, no, I wasn’t alone, out into a groomed pine forest and sent us out to move as quietly as we could.

“Go ... listen,” he said.

The floor of the forest was littered with several inches of shed needles and it was impossible to walk without “scrunching.” I tried but I couldn’t do it.

A few minutes later, I ... and I suppose the others ... heard a faint, “stop.”

I did ... I had to be at least a football field in length away from the start.

“Hide!”

I barely heard it. As I lay behind a clump of bush between three full grown trees, I tried to think, I am a bush here on the ground like my brother bushes. Thinking leafy thoughts I was shocked when Sensei said, “Very good, Flintkote.”

He was standing in the bushes I was hiding with! His right foot was within an inch of my left hand! I never heard a thing.

“Very good, indeed. I found you last. The others were easy. How long have you been living Japanese?”

“Three years. Why?”

“I couldn’t smell you. I had to find everyone else first. Then I listened for your breath and then tracked in on your heartbeat.”

“You tracked my by my heartbeat?”

“That ... and the fact that there were no birds flying, no animals moving and your heart.”

“We’re going to learn that?”

“Some of you will. Some won’t. Those that do move up. The others go home. There’s 16 in the class ... on average ... two make the cut.”

“I’ll be one of the two,” I said.

“I believe you will, Mr. Flintkote.”

And I was.

The cleanup was unbelievable. Almost 12 thousand dead. Whole extended families erased as if they’d never been. Even their homes, businesses, photographs ... everything. The Osaka records bureau flooded and the wet paper generated so much heat they combusted.

People who lived but lost homes couldn’t prove ownership or payment histories.

The odd thing was this had happened before and would happen again. Japan is volcanic islands and someplace on those islands there are hot springs, bubbling mud geysers and mini quakes ... every day.

When the Diet was satisfied that the recoverable dead had been recovered, that the missing would never be found and we had done all we could to seine the sea of flotsam, they released our boat, refurbished her, patted us on the back and gave us a Medal ... it wasn’t even gold. It was aluminum. Thousands got them.

Now that I had my boat back it was time to go.

“Might as well finish our fifth,” I said to Cyn, “And Zoe’s first.”

We were just newly eligible voters in 1998. We missed the last one, maybe we could vote in 2000.

Osaka, Japan to Taiwan, 921nm. At 10 knots? 3 days 20 hours. Infinitely do-able. The cat can average that using the jib alone. But first:

Where is Surprise?

<What makes you thing we know?>