Of course! It was obvious. Amy.
Could it be I was dealing with a madman who made people disappear?
If I was about to take on a pro like Noda, I had to cover every possibility. Which meant I had to get her out, away, beyond his reach. Today.
Still, though, there were so many questions. Who was really behind all the moves, the master puppeteer? Was it only Matsuo Noda, or was this possibly, just possibly, something that wound its way even higher. If so, who was the point man on that? Akira Mori?
The only rational countermove now was to back off and "survey prevailing conditions." Miyamoto Mushashi's keiki o shiru to iu koto. But to do that we had to remove ourselves beyond the reach of Dai Nippon's sword. How long did we have?
I glanced at the clock on my desk, the little Sony digital. The number 12:18 stared back, the two dots in the middle flashing every second. Amy was still at school, and for the moment I couldn't think of a safer place. They wouldn't even let me in without a pass. She didn't get out till four P.M.
So now what?
Simple. In swordsmanship, vigilance is everything. And there are two things you always have to keep in view. The first is called ken, the surface actions, the moves your opponent wants you to see. The second, and more important, is kan, the essence of things, the real truth. Ken covers the superficial moves; kan gives you the big picture.
Instinctively I still believed we had only been witness to ken, the distractions, the insignificant feints of our opponent. The deeper wisdom of kan still lay beyond us. Time to probe.
We had three and a half hours.