Stephen Hunter - The 47th samurai

“Well, it’s pretty hard stuff,” said Al. “Maybe I could submit a report to you, Gunny. You could look at it at a better time.”

“No, I’ve got to do this. Just tell me. Is it bad?”

“Well, here’s one thing I’ll bet you didn’t know. Whoever the oldest male victim is, he got one of them.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, there was a lot of blood soaked into his trousers, and they didn’t burn because they were so wet. The blood typology and DNA matched nobody in the family. Does that make you feel any better?”

Bob was surprised: it did.

Here’s to you, Philip Yano. You were tough at the end. You defended your family. You went down hard. You cut.

“Is it a surprise?”

“Nah. He was pure samurai. That’s how he’d go.”

“Good news, bad news,” Al went on. “Good news. I suppose, some mercy on a cruel night. The family members were shot. Nine-millimeters, head shots, once, twice. Someone went upstairs silently, from room to room with a pistol, and put them down. So there was no pain, there was no torture, there was no rape.”

“Only murder,” said Bob glumly.

“The ‘young female’ was shot twice, once in the jaw, once in the head. She must have risen, he got her as she was getting up, then he stood over her as she was still breathing and fired again. The others, the boys and the mother, it was clean.”

Bob put his head in his hands. God, he needed a drink so bad! He thought of grave Tomoe and what she would have brought into the world as a doctor, with her care, her precision, her commitment to obligation, her love of her father and mother. Shot in the face, then in the head. Lying there as he came over, she probably understood what was happening, what had happened to her family.

“Is there more?”

“Unfortunately. Gunny, are you all right?”

“Let’s just get this over with.”

“The bad stuff.”

“If being shot in your bed is good, then…go on.”

“They were cut.”

Bob blinked.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not ‘hurt yourself shaving’ cut. Not ‘hell, I cut my finger’ cut. No. They were cut. Cut.”

“Christ.”

“I translate, roughly.”

Al picked up a sheet of paper out of the document that he had highlighted with a yellow Magic Marker.

“‘All limbs and necks were severed. Torsos were sundered diagonally and horizontally. In two cases, pelvic bones had been cut through, seemingly with one clean stroke. In another case, rib bones were sheared in two at roughly a forty-five-degree angle to the spine. All spines were severed. The instrumentation in dismemberment appeared to be a number of heavy, extremely sharp sword blades. The cleanness with which the bones were separated at the site of each incision suggests a weapon traveling at considerable velocity, as if at the end of a stroke of an extremely powerful right-handed man. Several less forceful cuts were also noted; in some cases, bones were merely broken and not fully separated, suggesting men of less intense musculature.’”

“His students.”

“Yeah. Hmmm, let me see.” Al rose, walked to a bookshelf, and pulled out a volume. It was called The Japanese Sword: The Soul of the Samurai, by Gregory Irvine.

He flipped through it.

“Yeah, there’s nothing arbitrary about the cutting that went on that night. It followed prescribed methodology of seventeen ninety-two. Here, look at it. That’s any one of the Yanos.”

Bob looked at the page, trying to keep his rage buried. Rage was not helpful. Rage got you nothing but dead in a hurry.

“It’s a cutting scheme according to the Yamada family,” said Al. “It illustrated the various prescribed cuts that could be carried out when testing a sword on a corpse.”

The line figure depicted a body wrapped in a jocklike towel, with the various dotted lines signifying cuts through center mass. It was headless, and helpful lines pointed out the proper angle through the shoulder on each side of the shorn neck, through the elbow and the wrist and latitudinally across the body from under the arms all the way down to beneath the navel.

“Okay,” said Bob, “that’s enough.”

He needed a drink.

The Shogun liked to meet at the Yasukuni Shrine. He felt at home there, where the spirits of Japan’s many millions of war dead lay consecrated, amid the woodlands and the forests where only rarely could a gaijin be seen, and then never one mad with cameras, hungry for Japanese pussy.

He was surrounded by bodyguards, for, of course, he had many enemies.

But it was generally a quiet place, away from the hum and throb of his many organizations, his obligations, his many lords and lieges, all of whom waited for order and direction, his responsibilities, his pleasures, his orchestrations, his plotting, his aspirations. So he could walk and enjoy, from under the steel torii gate that towered over the promenade, which ran two hundred or so yards to the shrine itself, the classical structure of timber and whitewashed stone, ornate and serene at once.

Kondo joined him precisely at 3 p.m.

“Kondo-san,” the Shogun said.

“Lord,” said Kondo, who in street clothes and unarmed appeared to be nothing extraordinary. He was a square, blocky man in his mid-forties whose awesome muscularity was hidden beneath his black salaryman suit, his white shirt, his black tie and shoes. To look at his masculine face was to suspect nothing; no one could know what lay behind his opaque dark eyes. He was neither handsome nor not so handsome; he was in all ways anonymous and therefore unnoticeable. If with sword in hand he was a beacon of charisma, without one he could have been an actuary.

Kondo bowed from the neck and head, keeping the body taut, the feet close, the hands straight against the seam of the trousers. (Musashi’s rule no. 8: Pay attention to trifles. Thus everything, even the bow, had to be perfect.)

“Come walk with me. Let’s talk,” said the Shogun.

“Of course, Lord.”

“I suppose I should ask for a report.”

“Yes, Lord. The blade is as reported. It is absolutely authentic. It is the real thing, that I know. I have felt its power.”

“You used it, then?”

“I knew my lord would understand. I had to know the blade, and to know a blade one must kill with it. And now I know the blade.”

“Was it risky?”

“No, Lord. It was well planned. The woman was alone; she had no relatives. She was a Korean prostitute working in one of Otani’s clubs. It worked out very well.”

“You say it cut well.”

“‘The moon in a cold stream like a mirror.’”

“That well, eh?”

“Musashi himself would have been well pleased.”

“I hope we haven’t lost too much time.”

“Lord, I have made arrangements. Even now the blade will go to old Omote, the best polisher in Japan; then it will go to Hanzaemon, who makes koshirae like no other man alive; then finally, to Saito, the saya maker, again the best. Normally these men take forever, if at all. They will work quickly, however, for the Shogun.”

“Excellent. I trust you in these matters.”

“When it is done, it will be magnificent. When you make the presentation-”

“You must understand how important this is,” said the Shogun. “What is at stake. I stand for a certain Japan. That Japan must be protected. I am that Japan even as I protect it. I cannot lose my power, and the presentation of the blade will guarantee my position for years and years to come, plus win me the adoration of the masses.”

Kondo had heard this speech many times, but he pretended, for the sake of everybody, that he had not. “If you play your cards right,” he said, “it might even win you the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum from the emperor.”