The Fifth Profession (48 page)

Akira's voice became somber, and Savage knew why. A protector had to be anonymous. If a photograph was published, Akira's ability to defend a principal would be jeopardized, because an assailant might be able to recognize and attack him before attacking the primary target. In this case, the potential complications were even more serious. A newspaper photo of Akira would draw the attention of his and Savage's hunters and possibly hinder their search.

“It couldn't be helped,” Savage said.

“At headquarters while I dictated my statement, the police checked my background. I'd told them I was a security specialist. Several major corporations I'd worked for gave the police a positive assessment of me. But I sensed that the police checked other sources. Whoever they spoke to, the police soon treated me differently. With deference. I didn't understand their reaction, but I certainly didn't argue when they told me I could leave. But not to go far. They made clear they'd want to talk to me again.”

“And after that?” Rachel asked, self-conscious, her voice strained, the first time she'd spoken in several minutes.

“An enemy wouldn't have had any trouble following the police car that drove me to headquarters,” Akira said. “It turned out the police were so inexplicably deferential that they offered to drive me back to my home. I politely declined, pleading the need to walk and clear my head. Puzzled, I found a side entrance from the building and tried to blend with the crowd on the street. But I soon discovered I had company. Japanese. Skilled, though not skilled enough. For the next two hours, I tried to elude them. Six o'clock loomed quickly. I managed to use a pay phone to call the restaurant on schedule, knowing how distressed you'd be if I didn't report. But
again
you weren't at the restaurant. Something was obviously wrong!
What happened to you?
”

“Soon,” Savage said. “Finish your story.”

Akira stared at his teacup. “Seeking shelter in a public place, a bar that wasn't so crowded that I wouldn't see my pursuers coming in, I noticed a news report on a television behind the counter. Kunio Shirai. Another demonstration.” He shook his head in dismay. “But this one was larger, more intense, almost a riot. Outside a U.S. Air Force base. Whatever Shirai's trying to do, he's turned up the pressure dramatically.”

“We saw the same report.” Rachel's forehead was knotted.

“And somehow we're connected with him,” Savage said. “Or with the man we knew as Muto Kamichi, whom we never met.”

“But saw cut in half at the nonexistent Medford Gap Mountain Retreat.” The veins in Akira's temples throbbed. “Madness.” His eyes blazed. “I knew I had only one option—to seek safety with my mentor.” He glanced toward Taro. “I didn't dare return to my home. But I couldn't ignore my responsibility to Eko. On the chance that she'd come back from being with Churi at the morgue and arranging his funeral, I used the phone in the bar to call my home and felt startled when she answered
‘hai,’
the warning signal to run. I quickly asked her,
‘Why?’
‘Strangers,’ she blurted.
‘Gaijin.
Guns.’ Someone yanked the phone from her hand. An American spoke Japanese. ‘We want to help you,’ he said. ‘Come back.’ I slammed down the phone before they could trace the call. Americans with guns?
In my home?
And they claim they want to help? Not likely! The police would have posted guards to restrict reporters from the crime scene. How did
Americans
get inside?” Akira glared, his emotions finally showing. “If I could get to Eko and rescue her …”

“We called her as well,” Savage said. “At eleven tonight. She gave us the warning signal before an American grabbed the phone. They need her. They'll question her, but she knows nothing. They'll scare her, but she's valuable as a hostage. I don't think they'll hurt her.”

“ ‘Don't think’ isn't good enough,” Akira snapped. “She's like a
mother
to me!”

Taro raised his wrinkled hands, motioning for silence. He spoke to Akira in Japanese.

Akira responded. His melancholy tinged with relief, eyes bright, he turned to Savage. “My
sensei
has vowed to rescue her. His most advanced students will leave a few weeks early. Tonight will be their graduation. And Eko's release.”

I bet, Savage thought. Those guys upstairs looked as if there wasn't
any
obstacle they couldn't overcome. Whoever's in Akira's house, they won't know what hit them.

Savage bowed to Taro. “For my friend, I thank you.”

Taro frowned. “You call Akira a friend?”

“We've been through a lot together.”

“But the friendship is impossible,” Taro said.

“Why? Because I'm a
gaijin?
Call it respect. I
like
this man.”

Taro smiled enigmatically. “And I, as you put it, like you. But
we
will never be friends.”

“Your loss.” Savage shrugged.

Taro raised his head in confusion.

Akira interrupted, speaking solemnly to Taro.

Taro nodded. “Yes. An irreverent attempt to be humorous. So American. Amusing. But another reason that we'll never be friends.”

“Then let's put it this way. I'm a fellow protector. A good one. And I ask for professional courtesy.” Savage didn't give Taro a chance to react. Pivoting quickly toward Akira, he asked, “And then you came here?”

“Where I waited in case my enemies arrived. I couldn't imagine why you hadn't gone to the restaurant as we agreed. I feared that you
still
wouldn't be there when I called again in the morning.”

“Just as
we
feared for
you
after Eko gave us the warning signal.”

“What
happened?
“

Savage focused his thoughts, trying as best he could to restrain emotion, to summarize objectively what they'd been through: the chase at the Meiji Shrine, the escape from the gardens, the attack on the street.

“But we don't know if Hailey's men were in the van or if they shot at the van.” Rachel's voice dropped, plummeting toward despair. “More questions. The answers keep getting farther away.”

“And maybe that's the point,” Akira said. “To keep us confused. Off balance.”

“The obstacle race and the scavenger hunt,” Savage said.

Akira looked puzzled.

“That was Graham's view of life. It fits. While we search, we try to elude whoever wants to stop us.”

“But we don't know which group is which,” Akira said. He repeated a word he'd used earlier: “Madness.”

“I may be able to help you,” Taro said. “With regard to Kunio Shirai.”

It took a moment before Savage registered what Taro had said. Chest contracting, he stared in surprise at the deceptively frail old man.

“Before I explain, I sense,” he told Savage, “that you need to be assured. I have no acquaintance with the name by which you knew him … or
falsely
remember that you knew him … in America.
Jamais vu,
I believe you call it.”

Savage frowned. Straightened. Tensed.

“No need to be alarmed. My excellent student”—Taro gestured toward Akira—”earlier described to me the impossible events at the nonexistent Mountain Retreat. You saw each other die. You saw a man called Muto Kamichi, whom you've learned to call Kunio Shirai, cut in half. But none of it happened.
Jamais vu.
Indeed. As good a description as any. I'm a Buddhist. I believe that the world is illusory. But I also believe that earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanic eruptions are real. So I force myself to distinguish between illusion and truth. Kunio Shirai is real. But at no time did I arrange for my excellent student to accompany him—under
any
name—to America. I've never met the man. I've never dealt with him through intermediaries. I beg you to accept my word on this.”

Savage squinted, felt his shoulders relax, and nodded. Trapped in a sickening, wavering assault on his consciousness, he repeated to himself Rachel's favorite quotation.
Abraham believed by virtue of the absurd.

“Very well,” Taro said and turned to Akira. “A great deal has happened in the six months since I last saw you. In Japan. Or at least in the
undercurrents
of Japan.” The old man's eyes changed, their pupils expanding, as if he concentrated on an object far away. “In secret, a small force has been gaining power. Even longer ago than six months. It began in January of nineteen eighty-nine. With the death of our esteemed emperor, Hirohito, and with the forbidden Shinto rites involved in his funeral.”

Savage felt Rachel flinch beside him and recalled their conversation in the Ginza district about this same subject.

Taro's eyes abruptly contracted as he shifted his attention from the imaginary distant object and steadied them, laserlike, on Savage. “Religion and politics. The postwar constitution demanded their separation, insisting that never again would God's will be used to control this nation's government. But words on a document imposed by a
gaijin
victor don't cancel tradition or suppress a nation's soul. In private, the old ways are bound to persist. In pockets. Among absolute patriots, one of whom is Kunio Shirai. His ancestors descend from the zenith of Japanese culture, the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate in sixteen hundred. Wealthy, determined, disgusted by our present corrupt condition, he wants the ancient ways to return. Others share his vision.
Powerful
others. They believe in the gods. They believe that Japan is the
land
of the gods, that every Japanese is
descended
from gods. They believe in Amaterasu.”

12

The name, eerily evocative, made Savage tingle. He strained to remember when he'd heard it before—and suddenly recalled that Akira had mentioned it on the way to Dulles Airport while he tried to teach Savage and Rachel about Japan prior to flying here.

“Amaterasu.” Savage nodded. “Yes, the goddess of the sun. The ancestress of every emperor. The ultimate mother of every Japanese from the beginning of time.”

Taro cocked his ancient head; he clearly hadn't expected Savage to recognize the name. “Few
gaijin
would … I compliment you on your knowledge of our culture.”

“The credit belongs to Akira. He's as excellent a teacher as he was your student. … Amaterasu? What about her?”

The old man spoke with reverence. “She symbolizes the greatness of Japan, our purity and dignity before our glorious ways were contaminated. Kunio Shirai has chosen her as the image of his purpose, the source of his inspiration. In public, he calls his movement the Traditional Japanese Party. In private, however, he and his staunchest followers refer to their group as the Force of Amaterasu.”

Savage straightened sharply. “What are we talking about? Imperialism? Is Shirai trying to recreate what happened in the nineteen thirties? A mix of religion, patriotism, and might to justify trying to dominate the Pacific Rim and … ?”

“No,” Taro said. “The opposite. He wants Japan to become secluded.”

The statement was so astonishing that Savage leaned forward, trying to repress the force in his voice. “That goes against everything that …”

“Japan has accomplished since the end of the American occupation.” Taro gestured in agreement. “The economic miracle. Japan has become the most financially powerful nation on earth. What it failed to do militarily in the thirties and forties, it achieved industrially in the seventies and eighties. It subdues other countries economically. We bombed Hawaii in nineteen forty-one but failed to capture it. Now we're buying it. And huge chunks of mainland America and other nations as well. But at a cost beyond money, a terrible penalty, the increasing destruction of our culture.”

“I still don't…” Savage squeezed his thighs, frustrated. “What does Shirai want?”

“I mentioned that his ancestors date back to sixteen hundred, the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Did Akira explain what happened then?” Taro asked.

“Only briefly. There was too much to know, too little time for him to …
You
tell me.”

“I hope you appreciate the value of history.”

“I was trained to believe it's imperative to learn from mistakes, if that's what you mean,” Savage said.

“Not only mistakes but successes.” Taro braced his shoulders. Despite his frail body, he seemed to grow in stature. His eyes again assumed a faraway gaze. “History … During the middle ages, Japan was inundated by foreign cultures. The Chinese, the Koreans, the Portuguese, the English, the Spanish, the Dutch. To be sure, not all of these influences were bad. The Chinese gave us Buddhism and Confucianism, for example, as well as a system of writing and an administrative system. On the negative side, the Portuguese introduced firearms, which quickly spread throughout Japan and almost destroyed
bushido,
the ancient noble Way of the warrior and the sword. The Spaniards introduced Christianity, which attempted to displace the gods, to deny that Japanese were divinely descended from Amaterasu.

“In sixteen hundred, Tokugawa Iyeyasu defeated various Japanese warlords and gained control of Japan. He and his descendants returned Japan to the Japanese. One by one, he banned foreigners. The English, the Spanish, the Portuguese … all were expelled. The only exception was a small Dutch trading post on a southwestern island near Nagasaki. Christianity was exterminated. Travel to foreign countries was forbidden. Ships capable of reaching the Asian mainland were destroyed. Only small fishing boats, their designs restricting them to hugging the coast, were allowed to be built. And the consequence?” Taro smiled. “For more than two hundred years, Japan was shut off from the rest of the world. We experienced—enjoyed—continuous peace and the greatest blossoming of Japanese culture. Paradise.”

At once the old man's face darkened. “But all of that ended in eighteen fifty-three when your countryman, Commodore Perry, anchored his squadron of American warships in Yokohama Bay. They are still known by their bleak prophetic color. Perry's
black
ships. He demanded that Japan reopen its borders to foreign trade. Soon the Shogunate fell. The emperor, formerly kept in seclusion in Kyoto, was moved to Edo, which soon changed its name to Tokyo, where the emperor became the figurehead ruler for politicians eager to exercise power. It's called the Meiji Restoration. I believe in the emperor, but because of that restoration, the
gaijin
contamination resumed … increased … worsened.”