Kusanagi (14 page)

The cab drew up and the driver lowered his window to look out at the shop's sign. ‘Here we are, gents, Karate Arigato.'

The cab was made for five people but the five Japanese men barely fitted.

‘Please wait,' said the big guy on the kerbside jump seat.

‘Sure, guv'nor,' said the cabbie. There was forty pounds on the cab's clock, and the prospect of another forty or fifty for the drive back was music to his ears. ‘I'll happily wait here for you rather than go back to central London empty.'

The Japanese grunted, taking it for granted that the cabbie had agreed in the affirmative.

Karate Arigato survived mainly on its mail-order business to martial artists, fans and fantasists. It was at the end of a row of scrappy shops set on a main road heading out of town towards Walthamstow in the far north-east of London. In the window there was a picture of Fred, the owner, advertising karate lessons. Fred taught kids karate at night and ran the shop in the daytime. He had been a pretty good fighter when he was young but now his hips and knees were blown. Perhaps thirty years ago, before huge shopping malls and parking restrictions were invented, the row of shops would have been bustling, but now they were barely visited, clinging precariously to commercial existence.

Fred didn't notice five large Japanese get out of a black cab in front of the shop. He was busy listening to the radio and reading the newspaper at the same time. This meant that neither the news nor the discussion on the radio made much sense to him. However, the activity passed the time. It was a pleasant surprise when the buzzer on the door went as it opened. He stood up to see five burly Japanese men walk in. They seemed rather too big for both their suits and his shop.

They were soon admiring his samurai swords. Swords had been illegal for a few years now but no one had bothered him. It wasn't clear which were or weren't banned. His swords weren't sharp and they were handmade. Fred reckoned that made them legal, but he was glad he hadn't been challenged by the authorities. The swords were just for decoration, he reckoned, to be hung on the walls of those, like him, who admired martial arts.

The only people who normally cared about his throwing stars, cod warlock broadswords and num-chucks were his fun-loving clientele. Through the door to the back of the shop there was a pile of packing material to send this paraphernalia on its way to the bedroom samurai and closet Wiccans who collectively kept the financial wolf from his door. Some of his gear might look a bit wicked but no one ever did any harm with it.

The Japanese smiled a lot and bought themselves a sword each. It was nice to have a till full of fresh fifty pound notes. They bought sharpening stones too.

‘
Sayonara
,' said Fred, as they left.

Jim had one hand in his jacket pocket. He was gazing into Jane's eyes across the table. She looked completely wonderful in her little black dress. She was absolutely perfect. ‘How was your pudding?' he asked.

‘Just great! I loved the way they blew it up in the saucepan.'

‘Yeah,' he said, ‘it was magic.' He smiled broadly. ‘I've got a question for you,' he said, gripping the object in his pocket.

‘What's that?' She glanced away as someone at the next table stood up. She looked back at him and smiled distantly.

He took the box from his pocket and opened it. ‘I wondered if you'd marry me.' He held out the box. The diamond in the solitaire was about the size of an American quarter.

She hesitated. She picked the box up and examined the canary yellow stone. ‘No,' she said. ‘I'm not ready.'

Jim closed his eyes and sat back. He dropped his head.

‘Sorry,' she said, ‘it's very sweet of you.'

‘Put the ring on and think about it.'

She took it out of the box and put it on. It was loose on her finger. The giant stone flashed and twinkled.

The head waiter was trying to catch Jim's eye. Jim shook his head: now was not the time to bring in the string quartet.

‘It looks ridiculous,' said Jane, eyeing the huge sparkling rock. ‘It's great but it doesn't look right on me.' She slipped it off, pushed it back into the box and closed the lid with a snap. She peered at Jim as if she was a naughty little girl. ‘Jim, do I look like someone ready to get married?'

‘What are you waiting for? Someone better to come along?'

‘No,' she said. ‘Just a better time. I'm just not finished yet.'

‘Finished? What's not finished? You mean maybe you've not finished yourself off yet?'

‘Come on – let's not spoil the evening.'

‘Hold on,' he said, ‘you told me you're not ready yet.' He held his hand up. ‘OK, so this is not a negotiation. I said, “Will you?” and you said, “No.” That's right, isn't it?'

‘Yes, that's right. Not now.' She took his hand across the table. ‘You mean a lot to me, you really do…'

‘But?'

‘But however much I think of you, I love what I do more.' She squeezed his fingers. ‘I just haven't had enough of what I do. I don't want to give it up, not for anything, not even for you.'

Jim looked grim. ‘How long will it be before you want something more?'

‘I don't know. I can't make any promises. It doesn't have to come between us.'

‘No, I suppose not.' Jim looked over his shoulder. The musicians who had briefly filled the doorway were making their way out again with their instruments, ushered by the head waiter.

Jane was watching them. ‘OK,' she said. ‘Let me ask you something.'

‘What?'

‘Will you stick around for me?'

‘Yes,' he said.

She was pushing the box back to him. ‘Good,' she said. ‘I'd like that very much.'

He put it back in his pocket.

‘Can I ask you something else?' she said.

‘Go ahead.'

‘How much was that ring?'

‘You don't want to know.'

‘No, you're probably right.'

The chief priest of the Shinto shrine sat cross-legged on the floor. Behind him four priests stood by drums they were beating in a set of interlocking rhythms.

He read the scroll again. The calligraphy was the work of the high priest of the Ise Shrine.

A lost mirror

Reflections from the deep sea

Now are seen again

He laid the parchment in the urn of glowing charcoal, the heat bathing his hand. He watched the cylinder of paper first crease, then smoke. A flame licked up around it, rose up the sides and began to dance. He fanned his face. He closed his eyes and fell into meditation. He knew that the Yata no Kagami was a myth, as was the sword Kusanagi, which his temple guarded. It had been his first act when he had been elevated to check the package for the sacred item. He had retraced the same path as his predecessors, their careful study a tortured path he had followed years after them. Every fold had its many fathers and they, too, had found nothing inside the package but a thin gold bar to weigh down the box and a sheet of paper with a letter written in archaic script. He had held the letter and tried to read it but the writing was faint and indecipherable. He had closed the package and refolded the paper, as had his predecessors, and sealed it with his own seal as they had done in their time. Like the generations of chief priests before him, he had been left to ponder its meaning. It was a profound journey that only a few had been privileged to experience over those many centuries.

Now the mystery had evolved once more, as the smoke from the parchment thickened on its passage to the heavens.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head, the tassels on his black hat flicking from side to side. He straightened his arms and his golden sleeves fell down like curtains. He pulled out his mobile and SMSed the high priest of Ise Shrine.
I know of this, what are we to do?
He prayed that the answer would not come by scroll.

The phone was ringing. It was Davas's ring tone. Jim looked at the clock: it was the middle of the night. He grabbed the phone off the bedside table.

‘What have you done?' the old man practically shouted.

‘What's up?' said Jim wearily.

‘Have you seen the yen?'

‘No,' said Jim, slipping out of the sheets naked. ‘You know I don't do that any more. I try not to even look.'

‘Well, the yen is all over the map.'

‘Really?' said Jim, pulling on his dressing-gown.

‘My models tell me something big is going on. Who knows about the regalia?'

Jane was awake now.

‘Don't know,' said Jim, opening his bedroom door. ‘The professor. The guy that sold it me.' He went down the hallway in the pitch black. ‘Whoever they've told.'

‘They've told many. The whole causal nexus is lit up like the aurora borealis.'

‘Hold on, let me get to my screens.' He plonked himself down and opened up his trading battle screens. ‘Shit,' he muttered. The yen was down nine per cent in a straight line. ‘I did ask for a hundred billion dollars at one point,' he said. ‘I didn't mean it, though.'

‘That's rather excessive,' remarked Davas.

Jim groaned. ‘This fucker's going to roll all over the place,' he said, watching the currency shudder from one price level to another. ‘You sure a bit of Japan hasn't fallen into the sea or something?'

‘Certain.'

‘They're coming tomorrow to take a look,' said Jim.

‘Who is?'

‘Well, the Japanese government, I think.'

‘You need to be very careful, Jim,' said Davas. ‘You're up to your ears in trouble here. This is a game you shouldn't play. Just give the regalia up and be done with it.'

‘Max, they're coming tomorrow. They can take a look, make me an offer and it's all done and dusted. No need to panic.'

‘Panic!' shrieked Davas. ‘There is every reason to panic. The markets are never wrong.'

‘Max, it's going to be OK. It's under control.'

‘Jim, you're dabbling with forces you don't understand. Please be very careful.'

‘I will, Max,' he said, watching the yen spike up a whole per cent in a gigantic move that might have taken half a day in a normal market. ‘Now I'm going back to bed.' He hung up.

Jane was standing in the doorway. ‘Care to fill me in?'

‘Always,' he said, ‘but later. First I've got a scar that needs some kissing.'

Jane wouldn't let him fall asleep after his exertions. ‘No, you're going to tell me now.'

‘Later.'

‘No, sir, now. You've had your fun, and now you have to tell me everything, as promised.'

He moaned. The blood was definitely draining from his brain.

‘Sit up and talk.' She pulled a hair from his chest.

‘Ouch.'

She plucked him again.

‘Get off,' he said, and sat up. ‘All right.'

‘Waiting to receive.'

‘Well, what I didn't tell you was that the night before the professor showed up we had a night visitor, who, unfortunately, Stafford shot dead.'

‘Oh,' said Jane. ‘That's not good.'

‘And now the yen is going mental. As we both know, information spreads like honey and all of a sudden the yen is going nuts. So, we can assume a lot of people are getting to know about this.'

‘Nuts and honey,' observed Jane. ‘That sounds tasty. Are we talking muesli here?'

‘Maybe we are – things are definitely getting flaky.' He grinned. ‘But the reason the yen is going nutty might be because they think I want a hundred billion dollars in yen for their Crown Jewels. That's quite a lot of money to print in a hurry. Or it might be something else altogether.'

‘Like what?'

Jim looked out of the bedroom windows. The moonlight flooded in through the open curtains. He grimaced. ‘Well, I've read up on their Crown Jewels. They're basically the things the Emperor needs to be crowned with to be the Emperor. Clearly he wasn't, was he? So is he actually the Emperor or not? For that matter, have any of the Emperors been properly crowned since the jewels disappeared? You could imagine that the whole royal line way back into the past has never been legitimate. It's been rumoured that the regalia were lost in the middle ages but, you know, it's not really an issue unless they suddenly show up somewhere else. Then the whole family tree and royal line would be technically up the creek.

‘It's like a bomb under the structure of Japanese society. It's like us waking up one day and finding the Bible was written centuries after Jesus.'

‘The Bible
was
written centuries after Jesus,' said Jane.

‘Oh,' said Jim. ‘Was it?'

Jane nodded.

Jim shrugged. ‘Well, you get what I mean. Anyway, something's throwing a spanner in the works with the yen and Max seems to think it's me – he's probably right.'

‘Would a hundred billion dollars do that?'

‘Who knows? And who knows what rumours are going around? Maybe they think it's a trillion dollars.' He snorted with amusement. ‘That would be daft, wouldn't it?'

‘And pretty dangerous too,' added Jane.

‘Well, we'll see tomorrow when these people show up. The professor said he was bringing experts who are national treasures, but I think he meant experts to see the national treasures.'

To any child of the seventies, the cult temple looked like a tank out of the Atari arcade game Battlezone. This seemed to be missed by the followers who worshipped there. The shrine looked incongruous among the low-rise buildings of Azubudai, but it took a little effort to see it at all in its bizarre entirety among its higgledy-piggledy surroundings. The entrance had a distinctly fifties sci-fi feel to it. Above the jutting alien spacecraft lines, a long steep staircase loomed into a bay, like a portal, at the front of the building. For anyone with more imagination than it took to join a Japanese cult, Gort the robot from the
The Day the Earth Stood Still
seemed quite likely to step out onto the top step and welcome visitors.

Perhaps the massive tax breaks afforded to cults partly explained why a giant UFO-shaped building had been raised in central Tokyo. But it wasn't for financial reasons that a follower was sprinting up the loading ramp into the heart of the mighty earthbound spacecraft. He burst through the temple portal and ran down into the belly of the craft. He had to get to the master at any cost. He was panting and exhausted. Finally he reached the inner chamber. He could hear the chanting. He threw the doors open.

Around the giant pool stood the students, dressed in their white jumpsuits, their backs to the water. They were humming, their arms outstretched. The master watched the desperate man, red-faced and sweating, who was racing towards him. He clapped his hands and the students fell backwards into the pool. Then, with a shower of laughter, they surfaced and began hugging each other.

The man fell to his knees in front of the master. ‘Forgive me,' he puffed, ‘but I have momentous news you must know immediately.'

It was the same news that across town, an hour before, had brought together the grim brothers of the far right. They and others believed in the old way, the way of the samurai, an era when a nobleman could summarily execute a peasant for nothing more than a funny look. In their cause to rebuild the old Japan, they sent lorries with giant speakers around Tokyo to shout their slogans and preach their creed of ultra-nationalism. When they got too close to sensitive embassies, the Tokyo police would pull barriers across the road and make them move on.

There was a gentleman's agreement between the extremists and the authorities that the protests could continue so long as the protestors played by the rules. You could be rude as long as you were polite about it and the ultra-nationalists were proper in their outrage and protest. Their extremism was moderate, in as much as the state's moderation was extreme.

Japanese life was a tight web of unwritten and unspoken rules. But now all the rules were dead: the very spine from which these silent understandings hung had been broken. The Imperial Regalia, long lost but in spirit still present, had been discovered. The myth of its reality was a lie and the reality of the myth was true. The sacred objects of Japan were tangible. Now history had been reset six hundred years back and could be started again from there. If only they could get their hands on the regalia, they could crown their own Emperor and wipe the slate clean.

Nobody said anything. They simply sat and smoked and drank their whisky.

Hori-san was young, but resolute. Barely thirty, he would have been junior but for his ability to raise funds and provide muscle. His connections were not particularly honourable or his methods obvious. He won respect through his activity and zeal. With maturity he would be an important man. He stood up. ‘I will act,' he said raising his glass.

The others looked around to gauge the reaction of the group.

Hori-san held out his glass.

Mimura-san hoisted himself up, coughed and picked up his glass from the table. Another stood, then another.

Hori-san raised his glass higher. ‘
Campai
.'