Stephen Hunter - The 47th samurai

Noted:

Item: One head

Item: One paper parcel

The above articles are acknowledged

to have been duly received.

Here is where they waited to be arrested; here, months later, after they’d been ordered to commit seppuku, here is where their bodies had been taken.

The skylines of Shinjuku or central Tokyo were far away. Fall was upon them, a chill bit the air, soon winter would arrive. The leaves, russet, red, gold-brown, orange, fell to earth in riots of color. He drew his muffler tighter against his neck, pulled his cashmere overcoat tighter, looked and saw bodyguards with receivers in their ears all around.

“You’re sure?” the Shogun asked Kondo.

“Not totally, no. But I’m sure that he had nothing set in type, as we found no page proofs. I’m sure he had made no attempts to talk to police sources because we’ve canvassed. As far as I can tell he spoke only to a few sources: the tattooist and several, uh, ‘experts’ in Eight-Nine-Three affairs. All have been spoken to, all have owned up, all have been remonstrated against. They will not betray us again. For Yamamoto, I’m sure he had nothing except the possible suspicion that you and I had made an alliance.”

“Still, it’s disturbing. At this time, particularly, when things are so delicate and hanging in the balance.”

“Most likely, sheer coincidence. Someone saw something, and maybe this reporter had a hunch. He was well versed in the ways of our brotherhood, he knew who to ask, and he made some slight penetration into our business. Alas, his hair was blond like Charlize Theron’s and someone noted him and sold him to us. We dealt with him. That is the order of business. As for any information he may have learned, it almost certainly died with him.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, Lord, of course there is no ‘sure.’ I’m as ‘sure’ as I can be. But I can only talk in probabilities. We never had a conversation with him. His actions precluded that. He knew the conversation would have been unpleasant. But there’s no evidence at all he was working for someone and no reason to believe he was. He had as yet assembled no product: we examined his house seriously before lighting it. No notes, no story, no time line. He had nothing but suspicions and they died with him. That is the highest probability.”

“But what were the probabilities that Spruance’s Dauntlesses would catch our fellows on their decks refueling? Why would they come in at just that precise moment? The probabilities were infinitely tiny, yet the Americans fell out of the sky, and in five minutes we lost three carriers, three hundred of our best pilots, and the war. I think about that moment often, Kondo-san. That moment. Not one minute before, not one minute after. The carriers were turned into the wind, their decks laden with refueling planes. It was Japan’s moment of maximum vulnerability during the war, and in that moment the Americans struck.”

“The Americans cheated. They had the codes.”

“I hate the Americans. They always cheat. They are stupid and blundering and it doesn’t matter because they cheat.”

“I cannot protect you from God’s apparent enthusiasm for the Americans, Lord. He makes the unexpected happen, as Midway proves for all time. I cannot protect you from it, just as no one could have protected Nagumo from Spruance’s Dauntlesses. No one can protect you from Buddha’s whimsy, God’s will, the indifference of Shinto, or the sheer random drift of chaos in the universe. It sticks its ugly little head in at the most inopportune time. But we have done everything rational to protect you and to make this thing work and to get you what you so richly deserve. The only thing we can’t protect against is bad luck.”

“The Americans always have good luck,” said the Shogun bitterly. “Now they think they can take over my business, that I am vulnerable, that my planes are on the decks refueling. They are cheating by spreading millions around. It’s so unfair.”

“Lord, it will not happen.”

“That’s what Kusaka, Nagumo’s chief of staff, said too,” said the Shogun glumly.

“I understand. Therefore I have sent my best men to the polisher’s, and the security at that point is perfect. These are the boys who visited Yano-san and his family with me-all sworn, all bloodied, all who have cut before. There isn’t a man in Japan or even the world who could force the issue at the polisher’s. It would be one against six, and six of the best. Nii leads them and he will willingly give his life. He is true samurai. Your head is safe. And so is mine.”

It was the next evening, past midnight, at the same Roppongi Starbucks.

He put it before her. It was slightly scorched, but he gently opened the manila envelope and one by one spread the documents out onto the table of the coffeehouse. He could see Nick’s handwriting in kanji running up and down the pages of vertically lined genko yoshi.

“And no one saw you?” Susan asked.

“I done some crawling in my time. I got in close as I could, then crawled past the other houses till I reached the ruin. I didn’t even have to go inside; I found the kamado buried under some fallen timber close to the first-floor patio in the backyard. Half the bowl remained intact and the envelope was in the lining between the charcoal chamber and the outer wall. It slid right out. I got my ass gone fast. Total time on-site, less than five minutes. Just in case anyone was watching, I doubled back three or four times. Nobody could have stayed on me, way I ride. I’m in the clear.”

Susan applied the full force of her intelligence to the pieces of paper, now and then shuffling them, now and then righting them, trying to make them assemble into coherence. Bob sat quietly, aware that he no longer existed.

Finally, fifteen minutes and another cup of coffee later, she said, “Okay.”

“He had it?”

“Most of it.”

“Does it make any sense?”

“Yeah. In fact, it’s simple. It’s just business.”

“The guy we’re after, he’s a businessman?”

“Is he ever. His name is Yuichi Miwa, called ‘the Shogun.’ His fortune is based on pornography: he is the founder of Shogunate AV. Miwa got into DVD early and onto the Internet early; thus he made millions, which, reinvested in newspapers, television, software, games, and so forth, became billions. But now he may lose it.”

“Someone’s coming after him.”

“Someone is. It’s an up-and-coming AV company called Imperial. Imperial, evidently, has American money behind it; they want to take over the Japanese market, import American women, blondes mostly, to perform in Japanese-style porn. The government has forbidden that for many years, but if Imperial can get it done, their profits would go through the roof. Miwa happens to be president of something called AJVS, the All Japan Video Society, the industry rep group, I guess a kind of MPAA for dirty movies. AJVS works with the government and controls the regulations of the business; under the Shogun, the government has kept American product out of Japan. Miwa’s term is almost up and there’s an election. He’s won unopposed for sixteen consecutive years, but now he’s opposed. Imperial is spending a lot of money and is running a slate. There’s dozens of smaller porn studios, and they’re either going to follow the Shogun or the usurpers from Imperial. See, it’s like a lot of industries and regulatory agencies. If you control the industry association, you really control the regulators, in this case something called the Administrative Commission of Motion Picture Codes and Ethics. Really, as it functions, AJVS controls the commission. It is the commission.”

“So what does the sword have to do with any of this?”