The Fifth Profession

He tried the doorknob. It turned.

“Apparently no one cares if strangers go in,” Savage said. He couldn't subdue the puzzlement in his voice. “Stay close.”

“Hey, if I was any closer, I'd be in your underwear.” Savage almost grinned.

But her joke didn't ease his tension. He pushed the heavy door open and frowned at a dimly lit corridor. “Quickly,” he said, tugging Rachel in before their silhouettes made them easy targets.

As quickly, he shut the door behind them and noticed that there wasn't a lock on this side either. More puzzled, he scanned the corridor.

It ended ten feet before him.

No doors on either side. A staircase led up.

“What kind of-?” Rachel started to ask.

But Savage put a finger to his lips, and she became silent.

He knew what she'd meant to say, though, and nodded with understanding. He'd never seen a warehouse or an apartment building with a layout like this. No sign on the wall to give directions or indicate where they were. No mailboxes with names and buzzers. No further door with a security system that prevented access to the core of the building.

The stairway was concrete. As Savage and Rachel ascended warily, their shoes scraped faintly, echoing.

The next floor was also dimly lit, the corridor short, without doors, a further staircase leading upward.

Again they climbed, Savage's nervousness increasing. Why weren't Akira's instructions complete? he thought. How the hell can I find where someone lives when there aren't any doors or names on-?

At once he realized that Akira's instructions were complete.

The absence of doors eliminated the possibility of making a mistake. There was only one continuing direction- upward-and after an identically barren third floor and fourth floor, there was only one destination: the fifth floor.

Where the staircase ended.

Like the others, this corridor was short.

But at its end, a steel door beckoned.

Savage hesitated, his hand on the pistol beneath his jacket. The door seemed larger the closer he came. Again, as with the door through which he and Rachel had entered the building, Savage couldn't find a doorbell or an intercom, and this door too had no lock.

Rachel's eyes narrowed, communicating bewilderment and apprehension.

Savage squeezed her arm to reassure her, then reached for the doorknob. Pulse hammering, he changed his mind and decided that this door-seemingly unprotected-looked too much like the entrance to someone's apartment for him to just walk in.

Holding his breath, he raised his knuckles and rapped.

The steel door responded with muted thunks.

Savage knocked again, this time harder.

Now the steel door reverberated, a hollow echo beyond it.

Five seconds. Ten seconds.

Fifteen. Nothing.

No one's home, Savage thought. Or there's no apartment beyond the door, or Akira's sensei is too asleep to hear me, or…

Akira's sensei would be the best. No professional sleeps that deeply.

Screw it.

Savage turned the doorknob, pushed the door open, and entered.

Though Rachel clutched the back of his jacket, Savage ignored her, finding himself confronted by muted lights in a massive chamber.

No, not muted lights. The recessed bulbs beneath ledges that framed the ceiling glowed so dimly that “muted” wouldn't describe them. Twilight. False dawn. Even those descriptions weren't adequate. The illumination was vaguer than candles but just sufficient to reveal an enormous dojo, countless tatami mats on the floor, with subtly reflecting polished cypress wood on the beams and panels of the burnished walls and ceiling.

Like moonglow.

With deep dark spaces between each isolated, recessed, barely perceptible light.

Savage felt overwhelmed, awestruck, as if he entered a temple. The dojo, though in semidarkness, exuded an aura. Of sanctity. Of solemnity.

It was redolent of the sweat and pain… the discipline and humility… the mysticism of the Oriental martial arts. Mind and body, soul and sinew, combined as one. A sacred place. And as Savage inhaled its holy fragrance, stepping forward, metal slid against polished metal.

Not a scrape, not a grating sound, not a rasp, but a smooth, oiled, slippery hiss that made Savage's scalp prickle.

Not one hiss, but many. All around him. The dark walls seem to come alive, to swell and give birth. Gleaming objects appeared, reflecting the dim, widely separated bulbs that rimmed the ceiling. Long, curved, glinting blades apparently hung in midair. Then the walls gave birth again, shadows emerging, assuming the shapes of men dressed totally in black, with hoods and masks that covered their faces. They'd been perfectly camouflaged against the walls, and each gripped a sword he'd drawn from a scabbard.

Where Savage stood a third of the way into the dojo, he pivoted and saw that he was flanked on every side. His spine froze. He drew his Beretta.

Rachel moaned.

Glancing toward the open door, Savage frantically wondered how he could concentrate on fighting to get Rachel out and at the same time not be distracted by the need to keep Rachel from getting hurt. The Beretta held fifteen rounds. But there were certainly more than fifteen opponents. The shots would be deafening, however, the muzzle flashes a distraction. The swordsmen might hesitate for a couple of seconds, enough time for us to get through the door and start scrambling down the stairs! he thought.

But while he thought, the door was slammed shut. Swordsmen stepped in front of it. Savage's stomach sank. In desperation, he aimed toward the men who blocked the door.

Lights blazed, searing, blinding, the murky dojo suddenly as bright as the sun. Savage jerked a hand toward his eyes, frantic to shield them from the stabbing rays. In that instant, his only warning was a swift, subtle brush of air, an unseen swordsman lunging toward him. The Beretta was yanked from Savage's grasp. Powerful fingers paralyzed nerves in his hand, preventing him from firing. Distraught, Savage blinked, fighting to focus his eyes, to erase the white-hot image of multiple suns temporarily imprinted on his vision.

At last his pupils adjusted to the glare. He lowered his hand, his chest cramping, cold despite the heat of the lights, and studied his captors. He understood now that their masks had not only helped to camouflage them in the shadows but that the eyeslits in the masks had guarded the swordsmen's vision from the sudden disorienting glare.

Rachel moaned again, but Savage was forced to ignore her distress, to focus his attention, every instinct, on his captors. Without a weapon, he couldn't hope to fight them with any chance of escaping. He and Rachel would be sliced to pieces!

But the man who yanked the pistol away could have cut me in half while I was Blinded, Savage thought. Instead he stepped back to the wall, his sword raised like the others. Does that mean they're not sure what to do with us, whether to kill us or-?

As if on command-but without any perceptible signal passing among them-they abruptly stepped forward. The dojo seemed to shrink. Then they lowered their swords, tips aimed toward Savage and Rachel, and the dojo shrank even more.

Another step forward, each of the numerous footfalls almost silent on the tatami mats, just a faint sibilance as if the woven reeds exhaled from the weight upon them.

Savage pivoted slowly, tensely, judging the room, searching for exits, for the slightest sign of weakness on any flank. But even if I do see a possible exit, a corridor,