"Donahue, John - Sensei" - читать интересную книгу автора (Donahue John)

strict with himself. Photos of him over the years showed a man who
looked like a human howitzer shell. Even that morning, at fifty-eight
years of age, his workout would be grueling. His fingers were thick
and strong from countless sessions of tameshiwari board breaking. His
feet were tough and dry from hours of work on the hardwood floor of the
training hall, you could see the calluses clearly in the stark
contrasts of the crime scene shots taken later they stood out as white
patches, even with all that blood around.

Ikagi had come in off the street and changed into the white uniform of
the karate student. His belt had become tattered and ragged over the
years, but it still made a crisp black contrast to the pure white of
the karate gi. He probably knelt and faced the small shrine at the
head of the training hall. His students said that this was his usual
pattern. Then the warm-ups and stretches would begin. Before dawn,
Ikagi would be lost in a daily fine-tuning of his art: the punches
moving faster and faster, a faint white blur in the predawn light; the
kicks precise, balanced, and focused.

His attacker could have jumped in at any point, although the medical
examiner's report suggests that the master wasn't dead for more than an
hour before the building manager found him at five-thirty. Ikagi had
probably just begun his routine when the challenger appeared.

The evidence suggests that Ikagi knew something of the threat by this
time. Some faint rumbling was coming from Japan. And it quickly
became clear to the sensei just what the intruder wanted. Ikagi was a
little bull of a man, and he would have demanded to know why. Whether
he was surprised to learn the reason, whether he was surprised to see
his old student there in the flesh is anyone's guess, although they say
some of the really good masters have a type of sixth sense about this
sort of thing. Ikagi didn't mention anything to his family or friends
beforehand, but that's no real clue. If you look at pictures of people
like him, even when they're smiling, the eyes give you nothing.

Ikagi could have known that death was waiting that morning, but he said
nothing to anyone.

The ritual of the challenge was almost certainly performed. The
attacker enjoyed the symbolic trappings. The ritual was important. He
was most probably dressed in street clothes it's a bit hard making your
getaway dressed like an Asian assassin, even in LA but he most
certainly would have followed all the Japanese etiquette: the bows, the
ritual introductions and presentation of training pedigree, the request
for a "lesson."

When the fight was actually underway, it was nothing like anything most
of us have ever seen. In the first place, it was fast. Fighters at
this level of proficiency, going for the kill, do not waste time. The
more time you spend, the more fatigued you get. The more opportunities