Stephen Hunter - The 47th samurai

A slim Japanese woman in glasses and a business suit stared at him. She looked about thirty, which meant she was probably closer to forty, and sat across the room in a shabby, plain chair. She was reading Time magazine. She had beautiful legs.

He put his free hand on his forehead, felt its heat, then ran it down to his chin, which was sheathed in whiskers, two or three days’ worth. Yet he was clean. The Japanese had beat him unconscious, then in their thorough way cleaned him, sedated him, stitched him, and committed him.

“Oh, hell, where am I?” he said to no one, blinking at the brightness of the light, feeling deep pain behind his eyes.

He tried not to think of the loss, but the more he denied it, the more it hurt. An image of the perfect family came before his eyes, the little Yano unit, each committed totally to the other, the love that was duty that held them together.

It was all terrible, but the worst was Miko, the child.

Who could kill a child? he thought, and he felt killing anger rise and knew it would kill him before it would kill anyone else. The grief was like a weight on his chest, trying to squash all the oxygen from his lungs. He thought he might have a heart attack.

“Is there a nurse?” he said.

The woman looked at him.

“Sorry, do you speak English?”

“I was born in Kansas City,” she said. “I’m as American as you. My dad is an oncologist and a Republican and a two-handicap.”

“Oh, sorry, look, please get me a nurse or something. I need another shot. I can’t, it’s-it’s just, I don’t know.”

“Just relax, Mr. Swagger. You’ve been heavily medicated for three days now, I don’t think you need more medication. Let me call a doctor.”

She punched a button on a science-fiction control panel next to his bed, and indeed in a few seconds a staff doctor in a white coat with grave Asian seriousness came in. Pulse taken, eyes checked, head wound examined, Bob passed muster.

“I think you’ll be okay,” the doctor said to him in English. “You’re a pretty tough old bird. You have enough scars.”

“Really, doctor, I’m fine, it’s my-I need a sedative or something. I’m feeling very bad. I just can’t lie here. Can you get someone to release me?”

“The cops don’t want you free,” said the young woman. “The Japanese have very strict rules about certain things and you broke all of them and even invented some new ones.”

“I was a little out of my head. Come on, doctor, please?”

“Sorry, Mr. Swagger. You’re going to have to come to terms with it sooner or later. What you need is relaxation, peace and quiet, a good therapist, and your own country, your family, people you love and who love you.”

“I’d settle for an aspirin. Some kind of sleeping pill would be better.”

The doctor spoke in Japanese, then said, “I’ll give you aspirin for the pain.”

A nurse brought a tray with three white pills and a glass of water; Bob gulped them all.

Suddenly he was alone with the woman.

“You’re from Kansas City?”

“Yeah. I’m with the American embassy here in Tokyo. My name is Susan Okada. I’m head of the Bob Lee Swagger department. We specialize in deranged war heroes.”

“How’s business?”

“It was crappy for the longest time. Now it’s finally heated up.”

“Where am I?”

“The Tokyo Prison Hospital.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, it sounds so nineteenth century. You’ve been here for three days. Your wife has been notified.”

“She’s not coming, is she?”

“No, we didn’t see the need.”

“I just don’t-Ah, Christ, I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, we need a statement from you. Then we’ll get you to Narita and off you go. The Japanese won’t press charges.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s not how they see it. They have you for assault, disrespect for a police officer, public drunkenness, disturbing the peace, and worst of all, for not being Japanese. They’ll put you away and forget about it. They’re not that interested in your version of things.”

“Oh, Christ. My head hurts. God, I feel so awful.”

“Have a drink of water. I could come back tomorrow, but I think you’d be better off to get this over with. The sooner you do, the sooner we get you out of here.”

“All right.”

She opened her briefcase, got out a digitized tape recorder, and moved close.

“All right, the whole story. Your involvement with the Yanos, start to finish. How you ended up punching cops at the scene of a fire.”

“At the scene of a murder. Okay…”

He told it, not enthusiastically or well, but doggedly, the whole thing, the visit, the sword, his drunkenness at the airport, his discovery the next morning, his arrival at the site, his recollections of the troubles there.

“I don’t recall hitting anybody. If I did, he hit me first.”

She put the tape recorder away.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “Anyway, I’ll have this typed up. Tomorrow, you sign it. I’ll have you on the one p.m. JAL to LAX and booked through to Boise. All right?”

“No, not all right.”

“Work with me on this, okay, Mr. Swagger?”

“You have to tell me. What is going on? What is happening?”

“The Tokyo police and the arson squad are investigating. We don’t know much, we don’t have good sources with the cops. And it’s not what is diplomatically classified Official American Interest, so they’re under no obligation to answer our queries.”

“Ms. Okada, six people, a family of decent, normal, distinguished, happy people, were wiped out. Were murdered. There’s such a thing as justice.”

“The Japanese haven’t confirmed anything about murders. The official line has to do with an unfortunate fire, a tragedy, a terrible, terrible-”

“Philip Yano was an extremely capable professional soldier. He was a paratrooper, for god’s sake, the elite. He’d been under fire. He’d commanded men under fire. He was one of the best in his country. He was trained to handle emergency situations. If his house caught fire, he would have gotten his family out. If he didn’t, something is very, very wrong. That, coupled with my presentation of a sword that he believed might have been of some value, adds up to a very complex situation, requiring the best of law enforcement efforts and-”

“Mr. Swagger, I am aware you are a man of some experience in the world and that you have been around the block more than once. But I have to say that in Japan we are not going to instruct Japanese official entities how to do their job and what conclusions to reach. They will do what they will do and that is it.”

“I cannot leave six people dead in-”

“Well, there is one thing you don’t know. There is some very good news. The child, Miko Yano. She is still alive, Mr. Swagger. She was at a neighbor child’s that night. Praise be to Buddha or Jesus H. Christ for small miracles, but Miko made it through the night.”

Narita Terminal 2 again.

The embassy van, driven by a uniformed marine lance corporal, scooted through the traffic, carefully found the lane to international departures, turned into a gate where a magnetized card reader permitted swift VIP access.

A police car, with two grumpy Japanese detectives, followed but did not interfere.

“They really want you gone,” said Susan Okada, sitting in the back with Bob, who was now rested, shaved and showered, and dressed in clean clothes.

“That’s fine,” said Bob. “I’m going.”

The van pulled up, and Bob and his new pal Susan got out, took an escalator up, and went through the vast gray room where the ticketing desks were. All the paperwork had been taken care of; he was waved through security, so there was no comic scene about the steel hip. And soon enough he was in the departure lounge at the gate. Through the window, he could see the vast, blunt nose of the 747. The plane would board in a few minutes.