The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [9]
He watched them retreat. Finding their cabins was next. Then he would involve the others.
He tossed his cigarette over the side and strolled after the two men.
They were making it easy for him.
AT SEA, APPROACHING SAN FRANCISCO
Half a world away, from the deck of another ship—the Canton, a squalid tramp steamer, carrying only steerage class, a bucket of rust bound from Shanghai—as it sailed east and entered the straights that opened into another great deepwater port, a man stood quietly alone at the starboard rail, silently intoning a prayer as he watched the rounded headlands of a strange country draw near. A hoard of impoverished, ragtag immigrants swarmed around him, cheering as the mythical land of plenty glided into view. After enduring two weeks belowdecks in a pestilent hellhole of contagion and crime, it seemed for the first time conceivable that the gamble they'd made with their lives might have been worth the taking.
The man stood alone near the center of the pack, yet none of the others pressed in or jostled him. He was of moderate size, unextraordinary appearance, and occupied little space himself, but when he so desired it that space was never violated. Neither young nor old, nothing about him lingered long in one's memory: Even here, in the middle of an alert and agitated mob, his presence hardly registered. This was one of his most practiced abilities; to leave a hole in the air, rendering himself virtually invisible whenever the situation demanded. Yet even then he was left alone; the respect he commanded was granted to him unconsciously.
His parents and natural family were as unknown to him as these strangers on deck; no given name had followed him when he' was abandoned in an alley after birth. He had early on displayed such a self-reliant and single-minded strength of will that the brothers of the monastery who had raised the boy from infancy named him Kanazuchi—"the Hammer."
When the ship docked and they passed through immigration in San Francisco, no official would question that he was anything other than what he appeared to be: one of four hundred indigent Chinese laborers from Quongdong province on the Mainland. With his shaved forehead and topknot queue, he knew he could depend on the white man's inability to distinguish one Asian face from another.
That he was Japanese, a race of people still seen only rarely in this country, would not occur to a single one of them. That he was a Holy Man from an ancient monastic order on the island of Hokkaido was unimaginable.
That he was one of the most dangerous men alive he could rest assured was an idea that would never take shape in the mind of a single living being.
Kanazuchi ended his meditation with a grace that pleased his keen sense of aesthetic balance. As the ship sailed closer to America, the visions that had plagued his dreams for the last three months had grown more disturbing than ever before; only these meditations had any calming effect.
The agitation on deck increased; the outskirts of a city drawing closer on the rolling green hills. Shifting the light, oblong bundle on his back, Kanazuchi wondered if he would be asked to open it for inspection as they cleared immigration. Many of the skilled workers on board—carpenters, masons—had carried their tools along with them. Perhaps they would all be allowed to pass without having to display their belongings; if not he would find a way to avoid the authorities.
Kanazuchi was prepared. He had come too far. His mind was closed to the possibility of failure. And he knew that if anyone saw the sword concealed in his bundle, he would have to kill them.
chapter 2
"My name is Werner. If there is anything I must do to make your voyage more comfortable, please you will let me know."
"Thank you, Werner."
Doyle made to enter his cabin but Werner blocked his way.
"If I might be so bold: I have read about