Overview
Returning to Tokyo after many years, Nicholas Linnear—the ninja—must make a deal with the devil if he is to maintain control of his newly launched shipping concern. The exiled Russian oligarch Vladimir Orkin is the buyer Linnear needs for his liquid natural gas, but his offer is contingent on the ninja’s performance of an unusual service. Well aware of Linnear’s legendary skills in martial arts, Orkin demands that he take deadly revenge on the oligarch’s longtime enemy and avenge his beautiful daughter. As a final persuasion, he dangles information about Linnear’s past—information the ninja has never been able to uncover on his own. The lure is irresistible, but the danger may prove his undoing. . . .
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504030397 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 02/23/2016 |
| Series: | Nicholas Linnear Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 60 |
| Sales rank: | 148,444 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Eric Van Lustbader is the author of numerous bestselling novels including the Nicholas Linnear series, First Daughter, Blood Trust, and the international bestsellers featuring Jason Bourne: The Bourne Legacy, The Bourne Betrayal, The Bourne Sanction, The Bourne Deception, The Bourne Objective, The Bourne Dominion, and The Bourne Retribution. For more information, visit www.EricVanLustbader.com. You can also follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
Read an Excerpt
The Oligarch's Daughter
An All-New Story of the Ninja
By Eric Van Lustbader
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2016 Eric Van LustbaderAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3039-7
CHAPTER 1
KANJI
Nicholas Linnear returned to Tokyo in a steady rain that flooded the streets and turned the buildings sheet gray. The massive neon signs, blinking and scurrying within their borders, seemed dull, bloodless above a sea of umbrellas moving as if to one heartbeat. Nevertheless, the weather was a distinct improvement over the industrial smog that had trapped Shanghai in its suffocating embrace that morning. Already, to the north, in Beijing, people had donned respirators to keep their lungs clear.
Nicholas had left his new LNG supertanker still stuck in port, departing Shanghai in something of a hurry after discovering that the powerful Commissioner Anna Song had tried to have him killed following an unsuccessful attempt to make a grab for the nascent energy arm of his business. In desperation, she had attacked him herself, leaving him no choice but to kill her. If he had simply incapacitated her, he never would have been able to leave China.
He stepped into the limousine waiting for him at Narita Airport. As he settled himself in the backseat, gave instructions to his driver, he felt a swell of relief to be rid of Anna Song and her carefully plotted spider's web. But he was still left with the question of what to do with his tanker and the energy unit as a whole. The worldwide glut had hit everyone hard. His company had been spared the brunt of the collapse because it traded in liquid natural gas rather than oil, but the current marketplace was turning the enterprise from a potential moneymaker into a moneybleeder. Though his training in Japan had taught him to deal in long-range planning, he also had to find a way to make the bleeding stop. He had two choices: sell the business at fire-sale prices, or find a buyer for LNG that was in worse shape than the market.
That's where Vladimir Orkin entered the picture. A former pal of Russia's president when they were both young men in the KGB in Leningrad, Orkin had profited fantastically from his connections as well as from his own keen mind after becoming a power-broker oligarch. His mother was born in the far north, Murmansk, which accounted for the Asian cast to his eyes and cheeks — also perhaps why he had married a Japanese woman and felt comfortable here in Tokyo. He made the bulk of his billions trading in Russian natural gas reserves. But about three years ago, he had apparently gotten too arrogant for his own good and had run afoul of his old friend, who had accused him of embezzlement. Orkin fled with his Japanese wife, traveling through several countries in Southeast Asia before settling down in Tokyo. Apparently, he had made a shadowy deal with someone in power, for unidentified minions had thwarted no less than two attempts on his life already.
Now, without access to his gas hoards, Orkin was in need of an alternative source. His money supply dwindling, his debt ballooning, he had tried every conventional way he knew how to get out of the trap created by the event overrunning his plans. But this was no conventional situation, so his eye had at last turned toward Nicholas. There was no doubt that, from a strictly business point of view, Nicholas and Orkin were made for each other. The problem, Nicholas thought as the car entered Roppongi, was that he'd never met an oligarch he could trust. At best, they were sociopaths, at worst, criminals. Either way, their idea of morality was getting drunk with a friend and shooting an enemy in the back of the head. Or, if they felt circumstances warranted, vice versa.
Roppongi, filled with nightclubs, all-night bars, and raucous sushi halls, had an interesting history. Its thronged streets had been the entertainment hub for American GIs just after World War II. Over the decades, the sleaze had been cleaned up and the area had become fashionable, only to slip like a failed alcoholic into a booze- and sex-filled haze.
Nevertheless, this was where Vladimir Orkin made his home, a trilevel penthouse atop Pantha, a nightclub jammed with stoned twentysomethings dancing frenziedly with the latest iterations of domestic robots, one of those Japanese manias that was gaining momentum exponentially. Every hour, on the hour, people lined up, happy to pay through the nose to sing a karaoke duet with one of the electronic marvels with a face startlingly like a Disney princess. In a back room guarded by a pair of mountains on legs, others paid even more dearly for the privilege of having their way with sex dolls that not only felt lifelike, but responded to your commands, encouraged you in the filthiest language, and even reacted to every caress and thrust.
Nicholas took all this in, or intuited it, as he passed through the seeing-eye, velvet-lined doors. The club and all its charms — seductive or repellent, depending on your mood — splayed itself to his right. To his left, a black enamel door designed to be invisible to the casual observer. He announced himself by pressing a button to the right of the door. A moment later, multiple bolts were thrown remotely, and he pushed into a short corridor lined on either side with life-size hyperreal photos of young women in various stages of undress. Their cool stares observed the observer with an objectivity that bordered on the inhuman. It occurred to Nicholas that, in fact, they might not be human, but instead the latest model of sex dolls so coveted by Japanese men of all ages.
Two animated Japanese tree trunks in dark suits and ear pieces stood on either side of an open elevator door. Nothing in the interior looked the least bit enticing. Six or seven minutes later, having passed through three more layers of security, Nicholas found himself in a spacious, high-ceilinged room with a panoramic view of the nighttime city. A semicircular sofa and a pair of oversized upholstered chairs sat on the polished bamboo floor. To his left was a bar, behind which a robot bartender rose, stolid and silent. To his right was a pair of floor-to-ceiling sliding shoji screens. No desk, no banks of computers, nothing that gave the sense that this room was connected in any way to a business. Just a series of black-and-white photos of a sprawling dacha in the lush Russian woods affixed to the walls.
A moment later, part of the wall behind Nicholas slid open, and a large man with a bullet-shape head, bald as a cue ball, rolled in on a powered wheelchair. Vladimir Orkin had the massive shoulders and upper body of a weight lifter or a professional wrestler. On his left cheek was a tattoo of a crouching panther, black as the night outside.
"Gospodin Linnear!" he called as if they were approaching each other from opposite sides of a football field. "May I call you Nick." It was not a question. He held out a meaty hand, all callous. "Vlad."
"As if we're friends."
"But we are friends, Nick."
"Perhaps we will be," Nicholas said, "if luck is on your side."
"Ha! I like you already!"
They shook hands, trading crushing grips. Orkin's smile was as toothy as a shark's. "Please" — Orkin gestured toward the sofa — "Make yourself comfortable."
The moment Nicholas sat, Orkin said, "Vodka, yes." Again, not a question. A snap of his fingers brought the robot to life. Moments later, it rolled out from behind the bar and set glasses of iced vodka on the table between them. "Japanese ingenuity — am I right?" He lifted his glass. "I believe I settled in the right place."
The two men drank. Nicholas had scarcely swallowed the fiery liquor when Orkin said, "You know, Nick, I never did like that bitch Anna Song."
Nicholas was aware of Orkin studying him as if he were a specimen on a dissecting table. Orkin was making it clear that he knew a great deal about Nicholas. Time for him to do the same. "Luck, Vlad. The moment it changed for you was the day you drove the man you would help become Russia's new president to your dacha in Novo-Ogarevo. He drank in the lavish surroundings, the fifty-meter heated pool, the tennis court, your store of precious vodkas, and you convinced yourself that was all he wanted. But it wasn't, Vlad. His greed was boundless. He wanted it all, including everything you had so painstakingly built."
Nicholas held the oligarch in his flat, unwavering gaze. "And now here we are. Or, rather, here you are, an exile still running for your life."
"Nick, Nick, what have I said to get us off on the wrong foot? Did I hit a nerve mentioning Anna Song? Did she get to you, wrap her clammy tentacles around you?" He took another sip of vodka. "Well, don't blame yourself. We've all been there. Women — am I right?"
He put down his glass with a distinct clack. "Okay, to show you there are no hard feelings, I'm going to tell you something you'll thank me for. No charge, yes?" He put his hands palm to palm, like a priest about to begin a homily. "I'm not the only one in this room running for his life."
Nicholas was staring out at the high-rises of Roppongi and beyond. "Anna Song promised to help me get my LNG tanker out of the Port of Shanghai."
From behind him, Orkin said, "But she was murdered before she could do so."
Nicholas saw no point in affirming the obvious. What was Orkin up to?
The whisper of the wheelchair on the move, wind in the willows. "The timing of her murder could hardly be considered a coincidence."
"In my life, there are no coincidences," Nicholas said.
"Join the club," Orkin replied dryly. "In any event, it seems clear to me that Anna Song was murdered to thwart your efforts."
Nicholas turned back toward the room. There was a ghostly glint in Orkin's eye that could have been interpreted as either mischievous or malevolent.
"It appears you are up against a powerful enemy."
"It wouldn't be the first time." In fact, it had been Anna Song herself who had turned out to be his powerful enemy. He'd been meticulous in wiping all traces of his presence from her apartment. There had been no clues to who might have killed her. A wave of relief rolled through him. No one knew, not even this connected Russian.
"Is that so?" When Nicholas didn't respond, Orkin went on. "You know, Nick, I'd be damn disappointed if that wasn't the case." He shrugged, rolling across the polished bamboo to the shoji, which he slid aside.
Nicholas followed him into a large, fully equipped dojo, complete with mats, a rack of martial arts gi, bokken — wooden swords — and the caged masks that fencers used. There was a single figure in the dojo standing with bare feet shoulder width apart. He was clad in a black gi with a mesh cage over his face and held a bokken at the ready position, as if waiting for Nicholas.
"I've read a lot about your martial arts prowess, Nick." Was there a mocking note in Orkin's voice? Was he trying to goad Nicholas?
Nicholas laughed. "Really, Vlad?"
"Will we be friends, or won't we? I think you need to know this as much as I do. Am I right?"
Nicholas gestured to the figure. "And how will this determine anything?"
"My dear fellow, if we're to do business together, and seeing how we both have a price on our heads, I need assurance that you can take care of yourself. Am I right?"
"Don't believe your own intel?"
"Ha! I don't believe in ninja. The fantastic tales, the myths. I mean, come on!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Nicholas saw the figure take a step toward him. "I really don't want to do this, Vlad."
Orkin shrugged, not even bothering to answer.
Slipping off his suit jacket, shoes, and socks, Nicholas approached the sensei.
"The bokken are over there," Orkin said from behind him.
Nicholas advanced on the sensei. The bokken was in his peripheral vision and would remain there until the end of the exercise. He kept the sensei's head centered as he went into kokutan, the so-called black breath that emptied the mind as well as the lungs of any toxins, any superfluous thought or intent. The idea was to be in the moment. Any anticipation would commit you to a course of action that might prove to be detrimental. Only react and act as the engagement dictated. Nothing more. Nothing.
No bowing, no ritual whatsoever. The bokken came whistling in a diagonal, its arc shallow for precise control. Nicholas sidestepped the attack and ran right into the sensei's flat-footed kick. The heel struck him hard, turning him just enough so that the bokken's second strike would catch him on the forehead. He stood his ground, seemingly shaken, and pivoted at the last moment, taking the blow on the bone just below his upraised elbow. At the same time he was pivoting, the edge of his other hand slashed straight down, cracking the bokken in half.
The sensei lunged with the stubbed end, then threw it at him. Nicholas stepped up and allowed it to pinwheel past his left cheek. Grabbing the sensei's extended arm, he pivoted in the opposite direction, using the sensei's own momentum against him. The man allowed Nicholas to throw him but, landing on one knee, he was up and into his next attack: a series of kyorai — the come-and-go — acting like a tide, moving from attack to retreat and back again with a rapidity meant to confuse the enemy.
Nicholas did not bother to follow the kyorai that the sensei had chosen. Rather, he stood rock solid in the center of this false chaos until his moment arrived, and in the deepest part of the black breath, when everything slowed, seconds becoming minutes, he delivered a blow of such force it upended the sensei completely. As he hit the floor, the mesh mask was knocked clear. A thick cascade of black hair fanned out, gleaming like polished onyx, and a pair of umber eyes stared up at him with an impenetrable expression.
Orkin advanced toward them, his hands coming together in slow applause. "Nicholas, meet Tamsin Rose, my daughter."
The candle that burns brightest extinguishes fastest. So it was that night in Roppongi, rip-roaring from midnight to just before dawn. Nicholas, Vladimir, and Tamsin Rose sat at a swirled agate table, which, as it happened, contained the precise colors of the sunrise slowly spreading its fingers above Tokyo's towers.
Orkin stirred in his wheelchair. "My daughter tells me she doesn't like you, Nick."
Nicholas stared flatly at Tamsin Rose's oval face dominated by sensual lips and upswept cheeks, framed by dark, lustrous hair. But it was her eyes, as upswept as her cheeks, that riveted him. They were fiery, fierce, brimming with a wiliness decades older than her nineteen years in some mysterious way. "That's a pity."
"Not a bit of it," the oligarch said. "What she says and what she feels are two very different things."
The table around which they sat was laden with food that had little to do with breakfast: caviar, hot blini, meat-dappled borscht, sour cream, sushi, sashimi, and pickled seaweed. Orkin slathered his blini with mountains of caviar. Tamsin Rose ate sushi like a Japanese native, with her fingers, dipping each glistening piece into a small bowl of soy sauce fish-side down.
Behind them, against the far wall, an enormous tank held a magnificent octopus that coruscated colors as it danced through a series of Plexiglas tubes, working out in its own form of gym. Shape-shifting, it seemed real and unreal at the same time, as if it existed in more than one dimension, as if it embodied both truth and lies.
"You like Sylvia?" Orkin asked, seeing the direction of Nicholas's gaze. "You have an affinity for octopi?"
"They're extremely intelligent, as well as loving," Nicholas said. "They mate for life. They mourn their dead."
"Just like people," Tamsin Rose said.
"Some people." Returning his gaze to her, he found her eyes slitted, her small white teeth bared.
As if on cue, Orkin glanced at his wrist chronometer. "Nick, I apologize. Our time together is at an end, for the moment. I will leave you in my daughter's capable hands."
Was that a smirk on his face? He wheeled around and motored out of the room past Sylvia, who seemed to gaze at him with mournful eyes before returning to her endless exercise.
Tamsin Rose sat back, watching the sunrise. Last night's rain had cleared the atmosphere; the city seemed to go on forever.
"This deal with your father —"
"With us," she corrected in the strict tone of a nun to a particularly dense pupil.
"It will benefit your company and mine."
"I hate wasting time."
"Is there anything you do like?"
A dark flash crossing behind her eyes told him that he had struck a chord. It had come and gone in the blink of an eye. "We're both in dire straits."
"I'm not. My business is fine."
"Not your newly formed natural-gas division." She gave him a meaningful look. "Your board must be getting restless. Maybe they're looking to oust you."
Nicholas laughed. "They're welcome to try."
She took her time digesting this remark. "Why did you come back here?" She addressed him without taking her eyes from the vertical cityscape.
"Tokyo is home," he said.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Oligarch's Daughter by Eric Van Lustbader. Copyright © 2016 Eric Van Lustbader. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
