“Then, my children of the spirit, you must go!” said Kondo, and the four felt the excitement rise and crest.

Noguma was first, Muyamato second, he, Nii, third, and Natume fourth. They leapt from the truck and advanced in low, stealthy strides to the house.

The door was locked.

Noguma kicked it in, and as he kicked it, performed nukitsuke, the drawing cut, except there was no one to cut. Meanwhile, the others unlimbered their swords, possibly without the grace and beauty of Noguma, who had practiced this move a hundred thousand times. It was truly unfortunate that nobody was there to absorb his elegant energy.

He ran into the house, shouting, “Hai!” and looked for something to cut. There was nothing.

But downstairs he spied light.

“Hai!” he shouted again, and raced down the steps to the corridor, followed by Nii, while the other two went upstairs.

As Noguma ran along the corridor, he saw a man step out of a door with a sword and he raced toward him, full of lust for blood, full of energy, and executed a perfect kirioroshi, that is, downward cut, fully expecting to sunder the man from tip of crown to navel.

Alas, the man adroitly sidestepped and slipped with oily speed into ukenagashi, or “flowing block,” which enabled him to slide off into a horizontal attack and lay his blade’s edge at full force into Noguma’s guts through the navel, the side, almost to spine, cutting through to the core, slicing entrails and organs and everything else in the way, then withdrawing on the same plane so as not to ensnare the blade, and poor Noguma fell spurting, for the body is really nothing more than a thin bag of blood, and when it is ruptured, it empties rather quickly.

Brave and determined, Nii meant to unleash kirioroshi on his target and raised his own sword but the man was too fast and drove forward with the hilt of his already-raised weapon and hit Nii under the eye with a thunderous blow, pounding illumination and incoherence into his skull, and he slipped in pain, then lost all traction in the lakes of Noguma’s spewing blood, and went with a crack to the floor.

Yano cut down the first man in an elementary college kendo move he hadn’t realized he still knew, and the blade bit deep but with stupefying ease, and he didn’t even have time to mark it as his first kill, for now the only thing in his mind was his family.

He continued through on the same line, minimizing motion, and drove the hilt of his grip hard into the face of the squat second man, sending a vibration through his weapon. He drove a huge gash into the muscleman’s face, and watched him spill out of the way as well, with a possible skull fracture.

A third was before him, and he coiled around into the power-stance position, elbows back and cocked, and deployed kirioroshi, but this fellow was far trickier, parried the blow, and slipped off and by Yano.

The father turned as the man flashed out of the way. Yano lifted again, then realized he’d been cut bad. His legs went, his knees went, he slid down, down, down until he lay flat on the floor, staring up.

Above him, he saw his antagonist perform chiburi, the ritual flicking of the blood off his blade, then noto, the ceremonial resheathing in saya, a smooth ballet of practiced moves, then lean forward. He had a square, fierce face, eyes bright with exultation, a mouth so short and flat it expressed nothing at all. Yet it was familiar. Who was he?

“Why?” Yano asked. “God, why?”

“Certain necessities,” said the man.

“Who are you?” Yano said.

“I am Kondo Isami,” said his victor.

“Kondo Isami has been dead a hundred years. He was a murderer too.”

“Where is the blade?”

“Don’t hurt my family. Please, I beg you-”

“Life, death, it’s all the same. Where’s the blade?”

“You piece of shit. Go to hell. You are no samurai, you are-” and then he coughed blood.

“Die well, soldier, for you have nothing else left. I’ll find the blade. It belongs to me, because I was the strongest.”

With that he turned, leaving Philip Yano in a pool of his own blood in the darkness.

14

By the time he arrived by taxi, it was all over. The last of the TV trucks was pulling out. There was a crowd but by now it had thinned. People stood about listlessly, aware that the show was almost over.

The house smoldered. In a few spots, raw flames still licked timbers, but mostly it had fallen in on itself, a black nest of charred spars, half-burned boards, broken porcelain fittings, blackened flagstones. The odor of burning hung thick in the air.

The garden was a riot of smashed plants, footprints, the treads of tires where the fire engines had pulled up. A few shingles lay around, a few pieces of broken, scorched furniture.

He ran to the yellow public-safety tape. A few cops stood by, not particularly interested in the situation, in their navy-blue uniforms with the tiny pistols in the black holsters. Beyond, Bob could see some sort of conclave of investigators, men in suits or light jackets who had gathered at the sidewalk that once led into the Yanos’ vestibule. The whole scene felt moist, somehow, from all the water spent to fight the blaze; the ground was soft, in places muddy, the water pooled into puddles.

Bob pushed through the crowd, no longer really interested in the rules of politeness that defined the culture of Japan. He didn’t care about the polite mob of witnesses.

He ducked under the yellow tape that cut off civilian world from public-safety world and immediately attracted the attention of first one, then a second cop, and finally a third.

“I have to see the investigators,” he said.

“Hai! No, no, must wait, must-”

“Come on, no, who’s in charge? I have to see the-”

Somehow weight was applied to him. The Japanese uniformed officers were amazingly strong given their height, and with three of them gathered and more assembling, and the investigators looking his way, he felt the urgency of the collective will: go back, do not make a disturbance, you have no place here, you are not a citizen, do not interrupt, these are our ways.

“I have to see the man in charge!” he yelled. “No, no, let me through,” and he squirmed away and quite logically, it seemed to him, made to approach the investigators or executives or whatever they were. “I have to explain. See, I knew these people, I had business with them, you will want my testimony.”

It seemed so logical to him. All he had to do was make it clear.

“Does anybody here speak English, please?”

But for all his good intentions, he seemed to excite nothing but animosity on the part of the Japanese, who appeared not at all interested in his contributions.

“You don’t understand, I have information,” he explained to two or three of the men who were forcing him back. “I need to tell people something, please, don’t push me, I have to talk to the man in charge. Don’t touch me, don’t shove me, please, no, I don’t want any trouble, but don’t touch me!”

The Japanese barking at him seemed to be spewing gibberish, and their faces gathered into ugly, monkeylike caricatures, and he experienced the overwhelming melancholy that they really didn’t care and it infuriated him, and just at this moment, someone pushing on him slipped, a hand broke free and accidentally smashed hard into his chest, and the next thing he knew, he shoved back.

He swam to consciousness. He was in some kind of ward, his head felt like a linebacker had crushed it against a curb, and he was sore everywhere.

He tried to sit up, but handcuffs on one wrist had him pinioned to the bed frame.

The room was pure white, brightly illuminated. How had he been unconscious in such a place?