It wasn't dark here; it was worse than darkness: the moonlight spilled through the gaps overhead and dappled the undergrowth, creating a mosaic of black and white with nothing defined except the edges of shadow. I knew where the building was, and that was all; if there were trip-wires I wouldn't see them; if the dogs came I would only hear them.
The rhythmic whispering had stopped, not far away. A snake wouldn't attack unless I seemed threatening or was near its nest; if that sound had been a snake it would have come for me by now. But the thought of it persisted, its sinuous length, contracting, forming coils, the flat head held still as it heat-sensed me. A trickle of sweat gathered and ran; I breathed tidally, the better to listen. There were no distant sounds, only near ones, small and subtle, and once a creature voicing, a swift kill in progress, it sounded like, because of a cry cut off, and then scuffling.
I waited another few minutes and then unbuckled the harness and lowered it to the ground, stepping away, tripping on a tendril and getting my balance again. There was no accurate measurement possible, but if the jungle were this dense as far as the building it could take me the rest of the night to go half a mile, given the need for silence. It was now 01:09, and in four hours the moon would be down and there'd be total darkness here under the leaves, with only the glow from Sirius through the gaps overhead. I could stay here and sleep and acclimatise during the coming day, but there'd be heat, moist and enervating; and by daylight the dogs might roam, hunting, and if a wind rose in the wrong direction they'd pick up my scent at once. Or I could move now, and try to reach the building before first light, and deal with whatever I had to deal with in the dark. I thought that was the best way.
It was just before three o'clock when I saw the top of the radio mast leaning across the gaps in the leaves, and I put the distance now at three or four hundred yards. The silence was still not absolute, though there was no sound from inside the building; all I could hear was the nocturnal life of the jungle around me. Some kind of big cat had voiced an hour ago, perhaps a tiger, a low wickering in the distance, two miles away, maybe three. I'd heard a dozen more kills, one close, the scream of fright piercing the night and bringing the sweat out on my sides; there'd come the smell of blood raw and intimate, then the swishing of leaves as the predator had carried the prey into the deeper reaches.
And then towards dawn there was another sound, of a snout rooting, scenting, and in the mottled light I caught the shape of the dog as it froze for an instant and then came leaping for me with its ears flattened and its jaws bright.
19 Colonel Cho
Bassai. The jungle was in here, creeping through cracks. Migi gedan barai and then hidari, the triple blocks, very fast.
A rat ran along the far wall in perfect silence.
I was kneeling.
Migi shuto chudan uke, a whipping sword-hand.
His breathing was steady, then explosive.
The final sword-hand, hidari.
Kiai.
He bowed, and in bowing, saw me.
Stillness.
From my kneeling position I returned the rei, not only out of respect for his obvious rank but also to emulate the male woolf that arches its neck to the side, offering its death to the adversary in the hope of life.
'Os.'
When I looked up again he hadn't moved.
He was in the centre of the room, a big room, almost bare, its floor earthen, its walls fissured, with leaves and whole branches of the undergrowth thrusting inside; the jungle was slowly devouring the place, though I could see where he'd been hacking at it regularly, working his way round.
He was above average height but not tall; his gi was worn, patched, but clean; his feet of course were bare. His one eye watched me. The other eye had been buried in the hideous cleft, made by a blade of some sort, that crossed his face diagonally, cruelly distorting it. His mouth had escaped the blow, but it was no more than a thin line, set in an expression of total cynicism – or hatred or hostility; the mouth can only express so much, unlike the eyes.
His eye watched me with the look of a wild creature assessing the presence of another, of a smaller creature who could offer no threat but might be considered prey. The ice along my spine was because of this look he was giving me, robbing me of my identity. I was nothing, his look told me, human. There was also the similarity between this man's head and the dog's, because as the dog had leapt for me I had buried the machete in it, splitting open the skull.
Sunlight, pale and slanting, was coming through one of the gaps in the wall, and around the man's feet were motes of fibre drifting, still airborne from the final movements of the kata, of Bassai. The place smelled of damp, of fungus, of the jungle, a raw blend of animal droppings, fresh blood and chlorophyl. The shadow of Colonel Cho leaned right across the earthen floor, thrown by the low-angled light, its head against the whitewashed wall.
I waited, still in the kneeling position. There was nothing else I could do.
The bombs must have blown the rest of the building down, and there'd been fire afterwards. One wall was missing altogether, and on that side the room was criss-crossed with fallen girders, plaster and timber-work, festooned with creeper. The flooring in here must have been burned away, and he'd cleared the ashes, dumping them into the jungle, taking great care: there was no trace of them. He'd also found some whitewash, and covered most of the blackening the fire had left on the walls. The roof was still in place, a tilted expanse of corrugated iron, almost intact. The door I'd entered by was behind me; it had been open, and 'Qui etes vous?'
Flicker along the nerves.
'Un ami, Sempai.'
Acknowledging his rank. I would have said go-dan.
' Veus etes arrive comment?
'By air,' I told him.
'En francais.'
So I went back to French; it was the tongue we were going to use, obviously. 'We made a moon drop,' I added.
'When?'
'Just before midnight, Colonel.'
He hadn't moved yet. I wasn't looking forward to that. His movements in the kata had been swift and powerful, and underneath his chilling calm he must have been enraged to find me here. This place was more than just his territory; it was his refuge, his only haven in a world where he was an outcast, because out there he would have had to see people flinch when they looked at him. In coming here I had violated his very soul.
'How did you get past the door?'
His French had the over-correctness of those who speak a foreign language learned formally and not through usage.
I could have lied, but he would have known. And on the wall was a faded picture of Funakoshi, and there was the ingrained principle in me that disallowed my lying to a sempai. But by God it was a risk.
'I had to kill one of them.'
He was silent for so long that I didn't think that any kind of change was taking place; he was standing perfectly still, as before. Then I saw that something was happening to his face; it was altering its shape, moment after moment, in a way I didn't immediately understand, until I saw that his eye was now almost hidden by his nose and the raised flesh of the scar. He'd been turning his head, and by such infinitesimal degrees that I hadn't noticed. He was now sighting me, rather than watching me, and the impression I had was that he'd withdrawn behind himself, to observe me from concealment.
This was my first intimation.