On the Fifth Day (31 page)

where close to the twenty-first century.

He kept his eyes on the ceremony that was unfolding only yards away. He had sensed Kumi's silent approach, Jim stand

ing off to the side, but had not turned or moved away, and she had had no choice but to stand wordless beside him. That was why he had called her at the Agricultural Trade Office and told her to meet him here where there could be no scene, no shouting or ugliness that would disrupt the serene formality of the rites being performed before the small, silent crowd of on

lookers.

"You shouldn't have come," she said.

Thomas didn't look at her. Instead he spoke in a whisper, glad of something his eyes could follow that wasn't her.

"We nearly did this. Remember? A second ceremony to be held in Japan . . ."

There was a long silence. The priest smiled at the couple who responded nervously and took sips of what was probably sake in wooden cups.

"Go back to the States, Tom," she said. "Don't contact me again, okay?"

He started to say something, but she just shook her head, and there was something sad and weary in her voice.

"Go home, Tom. And get some rest," she added. "You look old."

She leaned into him, kissed him on his cheek, her lips cool, her touch so light he barely felt it, and then she was walking away.

Thomas stared ahead, gripping the rail harder now, just as the bride broke her stillness just long enough to sweep her hand into her husband's for the briefest of moments before be

coming once more a part of the ceremonial tableau. CHAPTER 65

"Should we find a hotel?" said Jim. "I can stay by myself if you'd rather, but it would save money. I don't snore. I think. Actually, I don't have a lot of good evidence on that."

He smiled sheepishly, his faint humor part of an awkward

ness that had hung over him since Kumi's brief appearance. Thomas was not sure about Jim, but this at least seemed gen

uine, and he felt something like pity for the man. There's nothing worse than being the third wheel, he thought, though I imagine priests wind up feeling like that a lot.

"Darning his socks in the night when there's nobody
there . . . "

"Sure," said Thomas. "I could stand to save some money. God knows how I'm going to pay these credit card bills."

"Right," said Jim, smiling with what might have been grat

itude, then looking quickly away. "Know anywhere reason

able?"

"In Tokyo? Good luck. But that's okay. We're not staying here anyway."

"We're not?"

"We're heading west into the mountains of Yamanashi,"

said Thomas. "There's something I need to see."

"But what about . . . ?"

"There's nothing for me here," said Thomas. He swung his gaze around deliberately looking for a subway station or a cab, avoiding Jim's eyes, and found himself looking at the glossies on the corner newsstand. His eyes slid over the im

penetrable kanji as they always had so that the few words he could read popped out of the background like neon. He took two hurried steps and picked up a copy of the Englishlanguage edition of the
Daily Yomiuri.
Two men were smiling 232

A. J. Hartley

and shaking hands from an inset cover picture, one Japanese, the other Caucasian.

What the hell?

It was Devlin.

CHAPTER 66

The senator, according to the paper, was part of a goodwill trade delegation involving representatives from states most likely to benefit from a deal lowering tariffs on imported fish from the Pacific Northwest and non-genetically modified grain from Illinois. He was due to give a press conference following a series of meetings at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku. If he was quick, Thomas thought, he could catch the end of it.

"That's a coincidence," said Jim.

"Maybe," said Thomas.

They looked at each other for a moment, like poker players watching for signs of a bluff.

"You don't completely trust me, do you?" Jim said.

"Not completely, no."

"So why are you taking me with you?"

Thomas laughed, a short, mirthless bark, and said, "Call it a leap of faith." They didn't speak again till they reached the hotel.

"The average U.S. tariff on imported soybeans, corn, and wheat is twelve percent," said Devlin, stretching his large frame in a barrel-backed chair of the hotel bar. "You know what the Japanese equivalent is?"

Thomas shook his head.

"Fifty percent," said Devlin. "And that's just the standard tax. There are seventy-two so-called 'megatariffs' of one hun

dred percent or more on foreign imports. Can you believe 233

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

that? Rice imports are kept to seven hundred seventy thousand tons, which is less than ten percent of the country's needs. We talk about free market, but this is a joke, or it would be if it weren't criminally protective of their own crippled agricul

tural system. Anyway, that's why I'm here."

"Just that?" said Thomas, watching Hayes, who was, as ever, ghosting the senator, absorbing his every word, his face blank.

"Just that," said Devlin. "And I hoped, after your last mes

sage, that I would run into you," he added as a concession, smiling quickly so that his bright, chisel-like teeth flashed in his square jaw.

"You knew I was coming to Japan?"

"I knew Father Ed had been here and that you were follow

ing him," said Devlin.

"What else do you know, Senator?" said Thomas. Jim shifted in his seat.

Devlin looked around the bar, deciding what to say, and then he leaned forward.

"Details are sketchy," he said, "but your brother died during a counterterrorist operation. That is why no one is talking. A number of hard-line militant Islamic separatist groups are based in the Philippines and in the surrounding area. One of them seems to have been the target. Now, what I can't find out is whether the DHS thinks Father Ed was involved with them somehow or whether he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught in the crossfire. Either way they would see the situation as delicate. If he was a homegrown terrorist, they'll want to find out all they can about him before they go public."

"And if he wasn't?" said Thomas.

"Then they screwed up," said Devlin. "They killed not only a civilian, but an American and a priest. Imagine how that would play, for God's sake."

"Bad press?" scoffed Thomas. "That's what they're wor

ried about?"

"It's what everyone in Washington worries about," said De

vlin with a bitter laugh.

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A. J. Hartley

"And just how hard would they work to keep it quiet?"

"If you mean would they attempt to take you out to keep the story under wraps," said Devlin, "forget it. No way. This is America we're talking about."

Thomas looked down and said nothing.

Thomas sank his hands into his jacket pockets as they walked toward the railway station with their meager luggage.

"So?" said Jim. "What did you make of that?"

"Not sure," said Thomas. "You?"

"Politicians!" Jim shrugged. "Who the hell knows what they really think about anything?"

"You thought he was lying?"

"I thought he was holding something back," said Jim. Thomas nodded, then stopped.

"What?" said Jim.

Thomas looked confused. He had drawn a square of paper no larger than a stamp out of his pocket, catching himself as he was about to throw it away. Now he was staring at it.

"He slipped you a message?" said Jim, incredulous.

"Not him," said Thomas, almost as disbelieving. "Kumi."

CHAPTER 67

Thomas and Jim rode the Chuo line from Shinjuku to Kofu, arriving in a little over three hours. Tokyo's urban sprawl turned slowly into the wooded mountains of Yamanashi and the Japan of the great nineteenth-century woodblock printmakers: rice paddies; steep-sided irregular hills, their tops lost in mist and cloud; and tiny, remote shrines. And, of course, Mount Fuji, a snow-crested, symmetrical echo of Vesuvius. In the course of the journey the sense of deja vu with 235

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

which Thomas had been struggling since they touched down returned with greater force than ever as they neared the town in which he had spent the two years before graduate school. He fell into himself, drawn by the gravity of memory, relieved that Jim was asleep and would need no commentary. He reread Kumi's note, considering the appointment at what had been one of their favorite places, and it was impossible not to see it as promising harmony, so that the train seemed to be taking him into his past.

They took a cab from the station, the driver in white felt gloves opening the rear doors automatically, and as Jim re

marked on this Thomas found his brain articulating the same

"Yes, that's how it was"
that it had been doing since they ar

rived. In ten minutes they were at the entrance to the Zenko-ji Temple, pacing the long avenue through the sculpted black pines to the faded red structure, and every step was, for Thomas, uncannily familiar.

An old man on a set of steps was wiring a long bamboo pole to the long, straight limb of a pine. He glanced at them from under his broad-brimmed straw hat and bobbed his head in greeting. To the left was the great bronze Buddha surmount

ing the ornamental garden Thomas had seen in rain and snow, and to the right was the cemetery of stone figures and square wooden staffs carved with kanji. He saw Kumi before she saw him. She was standing in front of a row of squat stone figurines that looked like diminutive Buddhas shaped like babies in var

ious poses.
Jido,
they were called, he remembered. Many wore red biblike aprons called
yodarekake,
one of which Kumi was adjusting.

She turned when she sensed them there, moving quickly toward them. Thomas was surprised to find her embracing him, muttering relief that he had made it and apologies for their last meeting.

"You've cut your hair short," said Thomas.

"Shorter, yes," said Kumi. "It's been like this about three years."

"I liked it long."

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A. J. Hartley

"I know," she said.

It was shoulder length now. It used to reach almost to her waist.

"It looks . . . professional," said Thomas.

"Thanks," she said, with a knowing, sideways smile that was so familiar, so absolutely
her,
that Thomas flinched and looked away.

"I'm Jim Gornall," said Jim. "I work at the parish Ed was serving when he died."

Kumi shook his hand and bowed fractionally, a habit she had acquired since being back, thought Thomas.

"I'm being watched," she said, straight to business. "A guy was in my office the day I called you. An American. I'd seen him before on Sotobori Dori. There's a golf store next to my office building and he goes in there."

"Maybe he just likes golf," said Thomas.

"Americans give up golf when they come to Japan, Tom,"

she said. "They can't afford it."

"You think he's Homeland Security?"

She shook her head.

"Homeland Security already questioned me about you,"

she said. "If this guy's government he's going through some fairly covert channels. My office is only a block from the em

bassy so it's sort of a magnet for U.S. businessmen looking to make a killing, but this guy didn't look official."

"How so?"

"He had a goatee. Hardly normal for anyone dealing with corporate or political Japan."

Parks?

Thomas nodded and told her about his dealings with Parks.

"I don't know where he fits in," he admitted, "but he's in

volved and he's dangerous. If it was him you saw in your office, then he went there pretty much directly after leaving St. An

thony's in Chicago, and he must have gone from there to Italy."

"Whoever it was," said Kumi, "I had no idea what the state of my phones were so I had to make it sound like I wasn't re

ally talking to you."

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O n t h e F i f t h D a y

"I'm kind of surprised you are," said Thomas. He said it lightly, but he meant it and her smile was an evasion.

"DHS knows you are in the country," she said. "I'm not sure why they aren't talking to you or having the Japanese police pick you up. They probably figure they can learn more by watching."

"Or they are hoping I suffer some sort of tragic accident so that all this stuff just goes away," said Thomas.

"Thomas is developing a very bleak view of our nation's government," said Jim.

"What do you mean 'developing'?" she said. "Thomas has prided himself on his skepticism about the U.S. government for as long as I've known him."

"Let's just say I'm getting more cynical in my old age,"

Thomas answered.

"Shame," she said, deadpan. "You were such the wide-eyed innocent before."

"Did you come here to help or just catch up on your in

sults?" said Thomas.

"A bit of both," she said. "I can't stay long. I'm supposed to be pouring soothing oil on the minister for agriculture, forestry, and fisheries in . . ." she checked her watch, "three hours. This trade delegation from the States has people jumpy."

"Devlin?"

"Among others, yes. You know him?"

Thomas told her of his meetings with the senator and his link to Ed.

"You think it's a coincidence that he's here now?" she asked.

"I don't know," Thomas said. "Were you in contact with Ed when he was here?"

She hesitated.

"He stayed with me for a couple of days, but all our energy went into not talking about you," she said. "In fact we talked about very little. I think he was relieved to go."

She sounded wistful.

"But you think he came here?" said Thomas, strictly busi

ness.

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A. J. Hartley

"I know he came in this direction," she said, "because I helped him with the train schedule, but he didn't say where he was going and I heard nothing from him after he left Tokyo."