Shibumi - Trevanian

A classic spy novel from the bestselling author, Trevanian, about a westerner raised in Japan who becomes one of the world's most accomplished assassins.

Nicholai Hel is the world's most wanted man. Born in Shanghai during the chaos of
World War I, he is the son of an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German
father and is the protg of a Japanese Go master. Hel survived the destruction of
Hiroshima to emerge as the world's most artful lover and its most accomplished-and
well-paid-assassin. Hel is a genius, a mystic, and a master of language and culture,
and his secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence,
a state of effortless perfection known only as shibumi.

Now living in an isolated
mountain fortress with his exquisite mistress, Hel is unwillingly drawn back into
the life he'd tried to leave behind when a beautiful young stranger arrives at his
door, seeking help and refuge. It soon becomes clear that Hel is being tracked by
his most sinister enemy-a supermonolith of international espionage known only as
the Mother Company. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on
one side, and on the other . . . shibumi.