"There is more to this than meets the eye," Chiun said slowly. His fists began to clench and unclench. He looked at his broken nail, and his wispy beard trembled.
"It all makes sense now," he said in a low, bitter voice.
"To everyone except me," Remo muttered. "I'll bet when we nail this guy he turns out to be an unemployed chopsocky actor or something."
Chapter 24
For Furio Batsuka, the first step to becoming a samurai involved being beheaded.
The correct term was kubi kiri. In medieval times one's head was literally separated from his neck. But this was modern Japan. And Furio worked for a modern Japanese multinational corporation.
After the so-called Bubble Economy had collapsed, many things were different. Events formerly undreamed of became commonplace. There was crime and unemployment, bank failures and earthquakes. Some called it Japan's Blue Period.
In modern Japan to be laid off was the same as experiencing true kubi kiri. Especially if one were a batter for the Osaka Blowfish.
"I am beheaded?" he had blurted when the team manager broke the bad news to him over green tea, inadvertently using the ironic term.
"You play too aggressive. Too American."
"I play to win."
"It is not always necessary to win. Sometimes a draw is good."
Furio nodded, but not in agreement. Then the manager spoke the words that changed his life.
"The shogun is interested in you. See him tomorrow."
THE SHOGUN WAS Kozo Nishitsu, president of Nishitsu Industrial Electrical Corporation. Furio found himself bowing before him early the next morning behind closed doors.
The shogun spoke without pleasantries. "I would like you to go to America. To play with a farm team we own. Eventually with the Mariners."
Furio could not believe his good fortune. To play U.S. ball!
"Gladly," he said.
"But first you must be trained. For though you will work with the Mariner organization, you will remain in our employ."
"A spy?"
"A saboteur. I have watched your aggression. I like it. It is worthy of bushi. "
And Furio bowed before the deep compliment. The shogun's ancestor's were fierce warriors. The code of Bushido was their way.
"I agree," said Furio Batsuka.
IN THE RESEARCH-and-development wing, whitecoated Nishitsu technicians measured him and then showed him a faceless dummy dressed in classic black samurai armor. On one shoulder rode the four moons of the Nishitsu Corporation.
"I am honored," he told them.
The sharp voice of Kozo Nishitsu snapped, "You will be honored once you have earned the right to don this armor."
And so his training began. He was presented to an old man whose name he was never told. This man trained him in the ways of the warrior. He learned the katana and its sixteen strokes. Archery. Spear fighting. The war fan. jujitsu. But most of all, he learned the code of Bushido, which made Furio bushi-a warrior.
After nearly a year the old sensei brought him again before the armor he coveted. Tears were in his eyes as the shogun spoke.
"The samurai are thought dead. No more. You are the first in generations. I congratulate you, Batsukasan. "
"I am proud."
"But because this is the modern world, you will wear modern armor," the shogun continued.
Sober-faced technicians dressed him. The many layers fit him like gloves for the various parts of his body.
The shogun said, "Years ago our superconductor research enabled us to devise a flexible suit that would alter the molecular vibrations of the human body so that a man could walk silently and safely like a spirit, and like a spirit, pass through solids. We called this the Goblin Suit. That prototype was stolen from us by Russian agents. But we have created a new suit, which you see before you. We call it the Black Goblin."
When the helmet was placed upon his head, the tinted, face-concealing visor dropping into place, Furio Batsuka felt weighted down by generations of pride.
Then someone turned the rheostat at his shoulder. The heaviness vanished. He felt light, like a cherry blossom. And the second phase of his training began.
Furio learned to walk through walls without fear. To place his feet so that he did not fall into the earth forever. And most frightening, to travel through telephone fiber-optic cable like fast smoke through endless straws.
They presented him with modern versions of the katana and other samurai weapons, too, and showed him how to employ their wondrous metal-cleaving blades and phantom properties.
When these things had been learned, too, the shogun told him of his mission. "You will go to America to play ball and undermine their rail system."
"Hai!" Furio barked, bowing his head sharply.
"You will kill many innocents."
"I am a samurai. I obey my shogun."
"You will live in an alien land."
"I am a samurai. I will do anything for my shogun. And to play American ball."
"Well spoken. Now, there is one last thing."
And as Furio stood at attention, the shogun stepped over and removed the four-moon corporate seal from his armored shoulder.
"Why. . . ?"
"You cannot be captured except by misadventure or malfunction. But you may be seen. You cannot be linked to us."
"But I am a samurai. You have made of me a lowly ronin. "
"When you return, your katana red with American blood, you will be a samurai once more," the shogun promised.