“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.

31

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.

“Mr. Swagger?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The best sword polisher in Japan is in London, restoring blades for the Victoria and Albert Museum. The second best is in San Francisco, giving a seminar for your countrymen. But the third-”

“The third.”

“The third used to be the best. Only time eroded something of his skill. He is eighty-four. His name is Tatsuya Omote. I have his address.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re on to something. I fear that three weeks ago, he abruptly canceled an appearance at a conference in Osaka. He’s missed the deadline on a commission he undertook for a shrine in Hiroshima. His shop doesn’t answer and he no longer responds to e-mail. This is very troubling to his friends, but he did send one e-mail several weeks ago telling them not to worry, he was fine, he simply had an all-consuming project.”

Bob looked at his watch. It had taken seven minutes.

“What now?” the doctor asked. “Should we call the police?”

“I think that’s likely to tip people off rather than set anyone free. I think I’ll drop by and see what’s going on.”

“That could be dangerous. Are you armed?”

“No, sir. Of course not.”

“Come with me.”

The doctor led him to the vault and spun the dial of the combination lock. He pulled the door back, and Bob had the sense of a great weight shifting on ball bearings.

Bob didn’t enter because he wasn’t invited. But the doctor emerged in a few seconds with a white weapon.

“Gendaito wakizashi. Modern short sword. It was forged in nineteen forty-three by one of the leading showa smiths at the height of his powers. It was meant for the smith’s son, who was then an officer on an island called Tarawa. Obviously, the son never came back. After the war, the smith remounted the blade in the civilian furniture you see now, which is why the saya, the tsuba, the same, the saego are all white. White is our black. It reflects grief.”

The doctor held the sword before him, cutting edge up, and with his left hand removed the white-lacquered saya. The naked blade gleamed in the light, beautiful and hungry.

“The old man told me, when the museum acquired his collection, that this was the sharpest, strongest blade he ever made. It was made with love to protect his son. But his son never got to carry it. The old man gave it to me with the idea that I would give it to my son, to protect him, but my son never got to carry it. He died early also. So I give it to you, because you are a son too. I give it to you in hopes that it can protect you with its magic ingredient of a father’s love. So this is really a gift to your father, from me. I hope he was a good man.”

“He was a very good man,” said Bob.

“Good. I’m praying that you don’t have to use it, but if you do, I know this: it will cut swift and fast and true.”

They drove through the suburbs, then farther into the farmlands surrounding Tokyo, the famed Kanto plain. Mountains loomed on the edge of vision, including the great one, Fuji, gigantically big, the clear fall day revealing it vividly. It looked like an advertisement for a Japan that only existed in the minds of western tourists.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “I have the bike. I could have found the place on my own.”

“Suppose you get cut. Suppose you’re bleeding and you can’t work the bike. Suppose someone calls the cops and you have to run away and have no place to run. You’re just a big gaijin and they’d pick you up in thirty seconds. No, Swagger, I do have to do this. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“And that’s why you’re carrying something under your jacket? Something about the length of a sword.”

“Otowa gave it to me, just in case.”

“Swagger, you are going to be so dead or so locked up and my career is going to be so over.”

“I can handle this.”

“Yeah, the white guy with a week of training. Uh-huh.”

“Don’t forget, I beat a little girl.”

At last they found it, on a nondescript street in a nondescript town, a nondescript commercial building with a few ground-floor shops, one of them clearly closed, its curtains drawn. The others in the line sold noodles, sushi, sex movies, liquor, and software games. But the sign over the closed shop simply read Nihonto.