Stephen Hunter - The 47th samurai

“Miwa has to win that election. If he loses it, he loses everything. So he needs to do something bold to make himself a beloved institution. He has to transcend porn and become a hero to the people. At that point, the smaller studios and Imperial cannot vote him out. He’s too big. He in essence becomes president-for-life. He maintains control of AJVS and the commission and ipso facto the industry; he prevents the American product from coming into Japan. His business thrives; Imperial withers and dies.”

“Now I get it. Yuichi Miwa understands how sword-nuts the Japanese are,” Bob said. “It will be his publicity masterstroke: he will make a big-deal announcement that he found the most revered relic in Japanese history. It’s the actual blade used by the great Oishi in the attack of the Forty-seven Ronin against Lord Kira in seventeen-oh-three. It’s the thing that took Kira’s head. He’ll get all kinds of media. He becomes a hero. That’ll establish him as the Great Man of the People who cannot be replaced.”

“The little guys know if the election goes against him, it will be a complete loss of face for the industry. They cannot afford the shame.”

“I see.”

“Yes,” she said, “and now it swings into line. That’s why the Yanos had to be wiped out. It had to be entirely a Miwa production, his campaign, his search, his recovery, his restoration, his presentation, all under his auspices. The Yanos mess up that narrative and show the random nature of the process. He’s not a campaigner for the culture, he’s just a rich guy who bought something off someone. So they had to be eliminated entirely, and their deaths had nothing to do with anything else in their lives. They were just the people who were in possession of the sword. They were in the way. They had to be destroyed for the welfare of the Shogun, their property confiscated.”

“So the Yanos had to die,” Bob said, “so some creep could win an election for king of teacher-blows-Johnny.”

“Well, you could have put it more eloquently, but essentially that’s right.” Suddenly a deep melancholy seemed to overtake her. “The terrible thing is, I think he wins.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Now it’s too late. He has the sword. It’s protected, it’s guarded, it’s hidden. No one could ever get it back. There’s no connection to the Yanos. He’ll announce it in time for this ridiculous porn election, get all the media, get the TV and the print, and win his little contest. I don’t see a legal way of reaching him. I suppose you could give a statement to the police identifying the sword as the one you brought into the country, I suppose we could find police factions that would see it our way, I suppose-”

“Yagyu Munenori, sixteen thirty, The Life-giving Sword: ‘It is missing the point to think that the martial art is solely in cutting a man down. It is not in cutting people down. It is in killing evil.’”

“Forget it, Swagger.”

“I can’t. I didn’t come across no ocean to give a statement.”

“It’s moot. You forget, we don’t even know where it is. You can’t be Toshiro Mifune because there’s no place to be Toshiro Mifune.”

“I’ll find the goddamn thing in ten minutes.”

“Swagger, you’re proposing a felony. I have a duty to report you to the authorities. I always told you this.”

“Okada-san, you know the authorities have been bought off by Miwa. There ain’t no authorities in this case. It’s just you and me, redneck and cheerleader. We do something or that little girl is orphaned and there’s no justice in it at all. It’s just a thousand years of history all over again: big guys with swords cutting people down and laughing about it.”

“That sword is locked and guarded in one of Miwa’s seven estates around Tokyo.”

“I can find it in ten minutes.”

“Swagger, it is locked and guarded in-”

“It’s being polished.”

“What?”

“The blade needed restoration. He would hire the best polisher in Japan to bring out every last wiggle of the hamon on the blade. It has to be beautiful, don’t you see? He can’t take the blade into his mansions, because the sword polisher’s equipment is heavy stone and the art of polishing a sword is delicate, slow; it demands total concentration. Somewhere right now, within a few miles of us, there’s a sword polisher working the blade to perfection under heavy guard. The polisher probably doesn’t want to work on the sword, but Miwa and his pal Kondo Isami don’t care what the polisher wants. They don’t care what anybody wants.”

She looked at him.

“So what are you proposing?”

“I go to the shop. I get the sword.”

“That’s a plan?”

“I’ll knock on the door. I’ll say, ‘Please give me my sword back.’ They will say, ‘No, that is not possible.’ ‘Hmmm,’ I will say, ‘I’m afraid I must insist.’ We will have a spirited discussion.”

“You are insane. You’re not a samurai.”

“The samurai left town. You’re stuck with the old white guy.”

“They’ll kill you, Swagger.”

“Think of something better.”

She couldn’t.

Susan dropped him at the museum at 6:30 p.m. and it took some yakking to get by the guards and the receptionist as the institution was about to close. But Dr. Otowa himself okayed the entry, came down and met Bob at the elevator, and took him through the somber gray light, the solemn quiet, the dignity of the displays, up to the office, where they sat among swords. The swords, behind glass in a humidity-controlled environment, were everywhere, except for the large black door that signified the presence of a vault. Inside it, there had to be more swords.

“Doshu said you learned well. He was very impressed with your skill and character. He is an astute judge of men.”

“Well, sir, glad I came through and that he thought I did okay.”

“Now, you said an emergency.”

“Yes, sir. I think I know where Philip Yano’s stolen sword would be. Well, it would be in the restoration process. That being the case, odds are it’s at a polisher’s because that’s the longest, hardest part of the process. I could kick around making phone calls and visits for a week, but I know you’re wired into that world. You could find out in a second.”

“You want me to make some inquiries?”

“Sir, the way these people operate, I don’t think an inquiry digs them out. These people want this blade restored now. They want someone good working crazily to finish the project in a certain time frame. They’re running low on time, they have a schedule to meet. They also have to restore the furnishings and scabbard, all at the very top of the art. What that means, I’m afraid, is that there’s a polisher who has suddenly disappeared. He’s no longer a part of the mix. He hasn’t been heard from and his friends are getting worried. He’s out of the loop, he’s gone off on an unexpected ‘vacation,’ something like that.”

“I know a journalist who would know. Please sit down while I e-mail him.”

The doctor went to his terminal, logged on.

Bob sat and let his eyes trace the curve and shimmer of the beautiful blades that surrounded him, while hearing the tappity-tap of keys. You could watch the comings and goings of designs, as the curves got deeper and deeper, then began to shallow out and rise toward a straight line. Or you could watch the tsuba change from a single iron ring, as rugged as a Viking oar, to an elaborate, gold-etched carving, elegant, too beautiful for its ostensible purpose, which was to keep enemy blades from sliding down one’s own, to cut the hand off. You could watch the points elongate or shorten, the grooves on the blades reach farther and farther, double up, shrink, then disappear altogether. You could see the play of hamon, sometimes feathery and insubstantial where the hard tempered steel of the edge met the softer embracing steel of the spine. All in all, it was quite a display, and even knowing as little as he did, Bob had the sense now of a secret world. Kissaki, yokote, mitsugashira, hamon, shinogi, shinogi-ji, hira, ha, mune, munemachi, hamachi, mei, mekugiana, nakago, nakagori, that was it, tip to butt, and he knew what each meant. It was a universe.