“There was no Thomas Lee. He’s gone, you’re gone, it’s over. You go back to Arkansas.”

“Idaho.”

“Whatever. Meanwhile, the ambassador finds a way to slip a report on your findings that I have written to certain sympathetic Japanese Ministry of the Interior officials. It will give them some guidance. I hope they act on it, and I feel certain that within the Ministry of the Interior, there is a clique that will want very hard to proceed. It may take some time and there will be no illusion of progress for a long time. But eventually, as the Japanese sort this out, they will proceed and the thing will be done, and those who killed Philip Yano will be punished. In any event, since we now have the sword, the immediate plan of the man who styles himself a shogun has been disrupted. He will not win reelection to AJVS, he will be undercut and destroyed. So that’s something. And in the end, we will achieve justice.”

“You know that won’t happen.”

“Way number two. Exactly the same outcome, except that you make some sort of ruckus or act irresponsibly. Four large gentlemen enter the restaurant. They happen to be former South Korean Special Forces guys who handle contract work for certain embassy departments when needed. They are very tough. Something like seventeen black belts among them. Lots of combat. They subdue you. It hurts. Then you are taken to the van, only you are wearing handcuffs and are severely bruised. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Swagger, don’t do that. Don’t put yourself and me and them and everybody through that. It would be such a waste, so foolish, so pointless. It would break my heart.”

“Okada-san, possibly at this moment I ain’t too worried about your heart.”

“Way number three. You bolt. There’s probably a rear entrance to this joint, and you are, as we know, an extremely capable, resilient, creative man, particularly in dark arts like escape and evasion. You break out, you get away, and try and finish on your own. Then we snitch you out to the Japanese authorities. A tall gaijin with no Japanese language skills, I don’t like his odds. Maybe it takes two days, maybe it takes three. But they catch you, divine that your passport is fake, read our signals and see we are not interested in helping, and off you go, before the judges. No juries in Japan. Second offense, off you go to prison. Five, maybe ten years. What a waste. What a foolish, sad, absurd ending. What a way for a great hero to end his days. No wife, no daughter. I will come visit you until I get bored, and then I won’t anymore.”

“What about way number four?” he said.

“There is no way number four.”

“Way number four: You send the big boys back to their cages. We proceed. I only need two days more. I meet Kondo Isami on the street at Asakusa at midnight. Your four ROK Special Forces guys handle security, so there ain’t no interruption. Kondo and I fight.”

“That is one of the things I am trying to prevent. He will kill you.”

“Maybe. Or I will kill him. If the first happens, you go ahead with your plans. On the other hand, if the second happens, you go ahead with your plans. Maybe the Japanese eventually bring down Yuichi Miwa, maybe not. The point is, the man who killed Philip Yano and his family is dead. Justice has been served. Or someone has died trying to do that justice. He failed, but at least he tried. Somebody called it ‘the nobility of failure.’ That’s the world I’d rather live or die in.”

“No. It’s not going to happen. It has been decided. We cannot have a dangerous, violent American citizen in this country illegally mixing it up with Japanese criminal elements, in ways that can’t be controlled and could explode into scandal, damage, death, anarchy, humiliation at any moment. We need the Japanese, we need their cooperation in a lot of bigger battles. There’s a war going on, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Philip Yano noticed. He lost an eye and a career in that war.”

“What happened to Phil Yano and his family was a tragedy and an atrocity. But the wicked, wicked world is full of tragedies and atrocities, and they can’t all be avenged. Other things may matter more, like national security, like smooth relations between allies, like truth in dealing with allies, like any number of things that will be decided by people who see the big picture and live with responsibilities you and I can’t imagine.”

“What is Okada-san’s attitude in all this? I hear the State Department, I don’t hear Okada-san.”

“Okada-san is samurai. She works for a daimyo. She lives to serve him. It defines her. She obeys her daimyo. She made peace with that decision years ago. Her feelings are her business and nobody else’s. Duty is the only thing that counts. Now, Swagger, please, finish your motherfucking chicken skewers and leave quietly with me. It’s the best way. It’s the only way.”

“You are a tough one, Okada-san. I give you that. Nothing gets in the way. Professional to the core. You sure you weren’t a marine?”

“If it matters, I hate to see this end. What you’ve done-well, I’ve never seen anything like it. But that’s neither here nor there. I am samurai. I obey my daimyo. Now it’s time to-”

A strange noise came between them.

“Shit,” she said.

She bent, picked her green Kate Spade bag off the floor, and fished out her cellular. It buzzed irritatingly.

“Your daimyo wants an update.”

“It’s not my daimyo’s number.”

She popped the thing open.

“Yes. I see. No, no, that was the right thing to do. And when? All right, thanks. I don’t know. I-I just don’t know. No, don’t call them. I don’t know, I have to think. If you call them, it makes even more problems.”

She closed the phone and put it back in her purse.

“So,” he said. “Let’s go to the van. Let’s get this over with.”

“No,” she said. “It’s all changed.”

He saw now something in her eyes that could have been the beginning of tears. Even her tough warrior’s face and its self-willed impassivity, a signal mark of her beauty, seemed slightly affected. Gravity somehow had altered it into something darker, sadder, and more tragic.

“That was Sister Caroline at the hospital. Armed men just broke in and kidnapped Miko Yano.”

34

It still made no sense to the little girl. She had been at her friend Beanie’s house and they had a party and played with Pretty Ponies and watched a movie about a funny strange green man in a forest and giggled the night away and the next day two strange men and a strange lady took her away to this place full of nuns and nurses and hurrying and scurrying. She didn’t belong here, but there was no other place for her.

She understood, of course, that something had happened. A sister led her in prayer and finally told her about a fire and that Mama and Dada and Raymond and John and Tomoe were now with God. That was fine, but she had to know. “When can I see them?”

“My dear, I’m afraid you don’t understand. Let us pray again.”

The days passed, then the weeks. Every time someone came in the room, she looked up, felt a surge of joy and hope, and thought, Mama? Dada?

But it was only a nurse.

They dressed her in strange clothes. The toys were dour and limp, many broken. The other children stayed away from her as if she were infected. She was so alone.

“Mama?”

“My dear, no. You have to understand. Mama and Dada have gone to be with God. He called them. He wants them.”

In her mind, she could see only one face that comforted her. It was from the TV, a fabulous story she loved so much about a little girl and her three friends who went off to fight a witch. One of the friends was a tall, almost silver man with a great cutting tool. He was the Tin Man. She loved the Tin Man. He was in her life somehow. She associated him with her father, for she’d first seen him with her father. The man was kind, she could tell. She remembered him in her own house, and she saw that in some way her father loved this man and the man loved her father, something she saw in their bodies, in the way they related and joked and listened to each other. If Daddy and Mommy and her sister and brothers were gone, she wondered about the Tin Man. She dreamed about him. Maybe he would save her from all this.