“This Kondo Isami came on the scene about five years ago. An underboss named Otani was having trouble with a Chinese-sponsored hotshot in Kabukicho and was bedeviled by one individual in particular. ‘Bedeviled’ as in ‘cut really bad.’ Kondo Isami introduced himself to Otani by sending a business card and a head. It was very effective. As Otani rose, so did Kondo, specializing in the impossible, the discreet, the hard to do. Evidently, unlike most of the yaks, he is not tattooed. He has to be brilliant, socially adept, and completely presentable. But even so, there are weirdnesses. Many who’ve met him have not seen his face; he goes to great lengths, including masks or theatrical lighting arrangements, to prevent certain people from getting a look at it. But he’ll meet others very casually, it is said. He goes dancing or clubbing. Suddenly, for no reason, he doesn’t care if anybody sees him. Now what the hell could that be about?”

“Sometimes he’s shy, sometimes he’s not. Maybe that’s all there is to it.”

“No, there’s more. Nothing’s simple about this guy. He has brilliant sword skills. He’s at the level of almost transcendent technique that some of the legendary sams achieved, like Musashi or Yagyu. His boys may not be quite so advanced, but their internal discipline is tremendous. Only once has a Shinsengumi guy been taken by the cops, and he committed hara-kiri in the station with a fork before he talked. He turned out to be a street gang kid who’d evidently been talent-spotted by Kondo, brought into the unit, trained, and disciplined. They found him soaked in his own blood with a smile on his face.

“Otherwise, they specialize in the hard to do. Enormously violent. There was a rumor some Chinese gangsters were going to mount a move against Boss Otani, and the Shinsengumi took them out in about thirty seconds in a Kyoto inn, where the group had gathered for recreational indulgence. They caught them in the lounge. The swords came out much faster than the Berettas, and they danced from man to man in seconds, cutting. Kondo himself split a Chinaman from crown to dick. Cut him in two, top to bottom. Amazing strength, but more. You have to know the art of cutting. He does. Then they left no witnesses.”

“Look, Nick,” said Bob, “I think Kondo has a new client. I think he took out Philip Yano’s family, stole a sword of some rare value that had come Yano’s way, and now he’s got some plan for the sword that I can’t figure out. So can you ask around, see if you can find out who Kondo’s working for and what he’d need a special sword for? And why would he have to wipe out the Yanos? Why couldn’t he just send a burglary team in, crack the vault, and walk out clean? Or even buy the damned thing, not that, come to think of it, Yano would have sold.”

“Sure, I can ask. But I’m getting something out of this. I’m getting a scoop that’ll make me the man in the tabloid game, and even get me back in the respectable rags.”

“Absolutely.”

“Nick, be careful,” Okada said.

“I’ll be careful. Meanwhile, Swagger-san, learn to fight.”

24

The compass no longer held four directions. There was no longer a left or a right. That up/down stuff? Gone totally. As for colors, numbers, signposts, any markers of a universe to be navigated rationally: vanished.

Instead, all reality consisted of the eight cuts.

There were only eight cuts.

Never more, never fewer.

Tsuki.

Migi yokogiri.

Hidari yokogiri.

Migi kesagiri.

Hidari kesagiri.

Migi kiriage.

Hidari kiriage.

Shinchokugiri.

Or thrust, side cut left to right, side cut right to left, diagonal cut right to left, diagonal cut left to right, rising diagonal cut from right to left, rising diagonal cut from left to right, and vertical downward, the head-splitter.

He stood, sweating, the very sharp blade in his hand so that his concentration wouldn’t wander. A mistake with a thing so sharp could cut him badly and he already bled in small quantities from a dozen brushes with the yakiba, the tempered edge, of the wicked thing. Doshu paid the blood no mind: the message was, if you work with live blades, you get cut. That’s all. No big thing. Get used to blood. It goes away or it needs stitches and there’s nothing in between.

“Migi yokogiri!” the bastard commanded, and Bob obligingly performed the downward right to left cut, not a slash, not a lunge, not a thrust: a cut.

“Kire! KIRE!” the man yelled at him.

Cut.

Bob realized there was magic to the Japanese in the word. It wasn’t like “cutting classes” or “cutting the rug” or “damn, I cut myself” or “don’t cut corners,” all those little metaphorical indulgences on the principle of the sharp thing encountering the soft thing, the sort of expressions a society might create that had never taken blades too seriously.

To the Japanese the word cut had special significance. You didn’t toss it about lightly; it was almost a religious term. With a sword, you cut. To cut was to kill, or to try to kill. The weapons were meant for that purpose only; they were dead-zero serious, no jokes, no jive, no sport, no fun. In their way, they were as meaningful, emotionally, as loaded guns and possibly more so because a gun could be unloaded but a sword never could.

“Left diagonal cut!”

“Right sideways cut!”

“Rising left diagonal!”

There were only eight of them. But everything depended upon those eight. If you could not master those eight, you had no chance.

“No, no. Angle all wrong! Angle bullshit. Angle must be perfect. Go slow!”

How long had this been going on? It felt like the crazed exercise at Parris Island, back when Parris Island meant something, where you were on a seventy-two-hour field exercise and nights bled into days, which bled into nights, until you were so aching you thought it would never end and your movements had gotten stupid with fatigue. What was your name? Where were you from?

But that’s what got Swagger through ’Nam three times, so as much as every second of it sucked hard and long, it was somehow worth it. You had to do it.

“Rising left diagonal! No, no, blade bent, no! Feel!”

The small man came behind the sweating gaijin and with vicelike fingers took his arm through the motion, controlling his elbow, controlling the angle of the blade, which had to be precisely aligned to the angle of the cut, else the whole process broke down, you got a blown cut and the sword torqued its way from your grip, or at least took you out of timing so that your opponent could get in and cut you bad.

No, not cut you bad.

The Japanese would say, Bassari kiru.

Cut you through.

He thought he’d pass out. But if the little man with the wispy goatee could keep going, so, somehow, could he. But it went on for hours and hours and hours until:

“Put sword away.”

Bob bowed, not knowing how or why.

He found the saya, remembered to extend it from him, and dropped it over the extended sword, whose edge he’d turned to self according to etiquette, and then returned it to the rack in the deity alcove.

When he turned, Doshu was tightening a men around his head and had already gotten on the body padding.

“Come, come. Now, you, me, fight. Fight hard. You kill me with wood. Good cuts. Make good cuts.”

Bob must have groaned; all he wanted was a nap.

“Come on. Only do for six, maybe ten more hours. Then I give fifteen-minute break.”

Bob realized-a rarity. A joke.

Hmmm. He found out quickly that he could fight or he could cut. But it was damned hard to do both. He was as fast as Doshu and now and then got his licks in, though perhaps Doshu was going light on him, even if the whack of the wooden edge against his unprotected arms or torso would leave welts and bruises for days. But when he hit, he hit sloppily. When he cut well, he cut slow.