Okinawa…

            He’d come to Okinawa the first time because of Prescott.  And, damn if it wasn’t Prescott who had brought him to Otaka’s doorstep yet again. 

            Two nights later, sporting black cotton pants, a black pullover and black rubber-soled slippers, Brady stood on the balcony of his hotel room waiting for the sun to drop below the horizon.

            He pulled out of the parking lot a half-hour later and sped off into the hills as darkness enveloped the capital city of Naha. 

            He scaled the compound’s wall and dropped down into a plush, colorful courtyard. He surveyed the grounds, recalling the days when he and Otaka’s other students had maintained these sculptured flowerbeds and elegantly tiered garden pools as they set off together on their great Eastern adventure. 

He crept up to the Dojo and peered through the window.  Sensei Otaka sat unmoving in the center of the floor, forearms resting on his knees. Three students lie prone on the floor in front of him.

            Brady slipped through the window and rolled into a darkened corner of the room.

            “They have mastered the art well, have they not, Kenjisan?”

            “Yes, Sensei.”  Otaka had not lost his touch.  “Reduced breathing technique. Tell me, Master, how long..?”

            “Since you entered the room, my son. There are but four bodies here, yet I sensed five distinct heartbeats. The one, though out of harmony with the rest, was at once familiar. One does not forget his prized pupil even though years pass between meetings.” 

            Brady walked to the center of the Dojo, bowed respectfully and sat down cross-legged. “Master, we must talk.” 

            “Hai, Kenjisan., I have been expecting you.”  He excused the students and they rose in unison and left the room.

            “Then, you have been reading the papers from America, Sensei?”

            “Hai.”

            “And you are aware of the Company’s current dilemma?”

            “Hai, I am.”

            “Then you must tell me all you know of the one called Azrael.” 

            “How have you happened upon this name, Kenjisan?” 

            Brady spoke of his life in Arizona and of Ally, which brought a smile to Otaka’s face.  

            “One day, a young woman showed up, Erika Kingston. Supposedly on assignment from National Geographic, but from the beginning there was something disconcerting about her. I can’t put a finger on it but Ally felt it too. I eventually dug out equipment from the old days and eavesdropped on one of her phone calls. Take a stab at who was on the other end of the line?”

            “Hai, Prescott.”

            “You know of her, then?”

            Otaka nodded.

            “And?”

            “You’ve been away from COMMEX for a long time, Kenjisan, since Elizabeth’s death. What you now ask could put you back into the thick of it. Are you prepared for that?”

            “Hai, Otakasan.” He looked into his master’s face. Although he was some eighteen years older than when Brady had left his tutelage, the essence of life still danced in the depths of the old man’s ink-black eyes.

             Otaka appeared lost in thought then said, “Azrael was born to the dark path. The murder of fellow human beings, he revels in it, craves it as one craves the essence of the Poppy. What he does is repugnant. Not just legally wrong, but morally wrong.”

            “Tell me what you know of him, Sensei. Who is he? Where did he come from?”

            “Out of your past, my son. There is a coldness inside him, as if he’d been born to dwell in a cave atop an ice-bound mountain. A heartless man who lives a blood oath, to avenge his father’s death.” 

            “I don’t understand?”

            “Azrael,” Otaka paused, then added, “is the Druid’s son.”     

            “Sweet Jesus,” Brady whispered.

            “He searches relentlessly for you and is a determined, capable foe.” 

            Brady was stunned. “He knows then?”

            “Hai, he knows that COMMEX and specifically you are responsible for the Druid’s death. 

            Brady’s questions were aimed at himself. “Then, I am responsible for the deaths of those agents? They were pawns, used to get to me?” 

            “Azrael is no neophyte, his knowledge of the ‘The Way’ is formidable, Kenjisan.”

            “Certainly, he is not a former student?”  

            “No, he was trained by Master Masaaki Cho. My brother once, now a sworn enemy.”

            Silence passed between them, then Brady said, “I must leave, Sensei. I’ve difficult choices to make.”

            “Hai.”

Brady stood and bowed.

            “Kenjisan, the choice is yours alone. Once made, you must be prepared to bear consequences that may adversely affect lives other than your own.”

            “I understand.”

            “Is it not sometimes better to walk away from such a choice?” 

            Brady smiled. “You test me still? To walk away also constitutes a choice, does it not? A choice that carries with it yet another set of consequences?”

            “You have learned much, my son.”

            Brady bowed his head low, his chin touching his breastbone, exhibiting abiding respect. “I had a great man as my teacher.”

            Otaka’s eyes moistened.

            “Goodbye, Master. I will visit again, soon.”

            “Hai, Kenjisan.”

             Brady walked out the door and strode across the compound toward the front gate.

             Warm tears welled in the old man’s eyes. “If not in this world then surely in the next,” he muttered.

            Seiji stepped from the shadows and stood next to Otaka.

            “Follow him, my son. Stay close, closer than ever before.”

            “Hai.”

            Otaka’s voice was weary. “We near the end of a long journey and these are turbulent times.”

            That night, Brady examined the man staring back at him from the mirror. “Sweet Jesus,” he whispered, wondering how middle age had crept up on him a whole lot sooner than it should have. “Well, old man, what in hell do we do now?” It seemed, at times, as if the fates had conspired to ensure that his path in life be strewn with rocks and surrounded by mountains that defied human passage. 

            And, always, there was loneliness. 

            He’d been left at the orphanage when he was six months old.  

            Years later, as a ward of the state, he spent time reading and studying the discipline of Isshin-Ryu, the traditional Okinawan karate style. 

            Then, COMMEX, the chance encounter that altered the path of his life. Komichi! 

            Prescott had intervened when Brady was at his most vulnerable. Fresh out of the Army, and from a run-in with Elizabeth’s parents, he was a young man searching desperately for a place to vent his anger. And Prescott had leveraged that anger, sweet-talked him and sold him on joining Shadow Company, couching it as a ‘golden opportunity’ to do something for his country. Through the deft insertion of phrases like pride, duty and patriotism, he had convinced Brady that COMMEX offered untold monetary remuneration as well as the freedom of thought and action not available in commerce and industry or in other branches of government.

            And Brady bought it all, no questions asked. What he had done for COMMEX was done out of duty, out of respect for his flag and loyalty to his country. He became a mercenary, a soldier for whom there was only winning and losing, living and dying. He had carried out assignments so unspeakable that not even the military sanctioned or acknowledged them.    

            He’d been a soldier without uniform, without credentials or identity living in a self-imposed purgatory where, with each assignment, his target became every broken promise and every shattered dream he’d ever known. And it had shaped his life for ten long, bloody years.  

            He snatched up his suitcase. “Well, I escaped COMMEX’s tentacles once and I’ll be damned if I’ll get caught in its grasp again. Azrael can go straight to hell and join his old man. Besides, he thought, I live in Arizona where neither he nor the Mezzhandi could find me in a hundred years, right?