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But the bed-wetting started and it annoyed the sisters and the nurses. They tried to hide their anger, but a child is sensitive to nuances of face and tone and body, and she realized that she was letting them down horribly. It made her sad. She could not help it. It humiliated her, because hygiene (she didn’t know that word but thought only of her mother’s term for it, “being fresh”) meant so much and she had been coached in it so powerfully by Mama and now she couldn’t control her dirtiness. Voices weren’t raised, punishments weren’t threatened, blows weren’t unleashed; still, she felt the nuns’ disappointment like a powerful weight.

She didn’t know when the screaming started. But after a while, it seemed that there had always been screaming. She had no idea where it came from, but some nights, when she was alone in the dark and sometimes asleep, and sometimes not, she began to hear the screaming.

Mama? Dada? Raymond? John? Tomoe?

It wasn’t them, but it was. She missed them so. Why had they left? Why did God want them so badly? It seemed unfair.

“You must be strong,” the nuns told her.

But what was this strong? Her brothers, especially Raymond, the ballplayer, were strong. They lifted weights and their muscles bulged and shone in the light. They laughed and teased and needled each other about school and girls and homework and other things, and it had been so wonderful, though of course at the time she didn’t know how wonderful, and that it would soon end forever.

But that seemed not to be the strong the nurses wanted. It wasn’t muscles, but some other thing that she could not understand and could never do. It had nothing to do with each morning’s wet bed and every other night’s screams.

“It’s you that’s screaming,” one of the nurses said. “Not anyone else. Please, darling, you have nothing to fear. You are among friends who will take care of you. You must be”-that word again-“strong.”

And then one afternoon the screaming was so loud it woke her. But then she noticed she hadn’t been sleeping. It was daylight. There were no shadows. It occurred to her that it was not, this time, her own screams or the screams of Mama and Dada and John and Raymond and Tomoe but of Sister Maria.

At that point the door to her room exploded open, and a giant monster crashed in. He was a very bad giant monster, she could tell. One side of his head was swollen and yellowish, he had a bandage over the lower half of his face, and blood spots stood out against the white. He looked her over and she was so scared she peed.

He grabbed her.

“Little girl,” he said, “you will do exactly what I say or I will hit you hard. Do you understand?”

She felt the full force of adult will against her and if she wanted to scream, she couldn’t, for she was too scared.

Holding her roughly, he proceeded to the hall. She saw Sister Maria on the ground, her face bloody, and Nurse Aoki kneeling over her trying to help, afraid to look up, shaking with fright. She thought of the Tin Man. The Tin Man could save her. But the Tin Man was not there.

As the giant monster roared along the hall, two other giant monsters joined him, in the same black suits.

In seconds they were outside. Nobody had bothered to get her a coat or anything.

A sleek black car pulled up, and the giant monster shoved Miko into it and sat next to her, his bulk dominating.

“You,” he said. “No noise, no screaming, do what you are told, or it will be hard on you. Squat down so nobody can see you.”

He forced the child to the floor and threw a blanket over her as the car pulled away with a screech.

35

FACE-TO-FACE

Exactly as Bob had planned, an ad keyed to The Nobility of Failure appeared in the Japan Times’ Personals section. The difference was that it was not sent from him to Kondo Isami but from Kondo to him. It deciphered neatly enough to “Yasukuni gate, 10 a.m. Tuesday.”

“They’ll kill you,” said Susan Okada.

“No. Not if I don’t have the sword. What he’ll do is set up a second meet. That’s when they’ll kill me.”

“Oh. That’s so much better. Look, we have to call the police.”

“No. You know that Kondo, or his boss, Miwa, have sources and influences in the police. If you tell them, in ten seconds Kondo knows. And what does that get? It gets Miko killed, it gets me killed. I will go to this meeting, I will set up the next meeting, the exchange, and we’ll go from there.”

“But he’s holding all the cards and he knows it. You can’t negotiate with someone who has an advantage. He will get you to some deserted place, kill you, take the sword, kill Miko, and go ahead with his plan. They’ll win.”

“Maybe I can-”

“No! You’ll get her killed. You’ll get yourself killed. Miwa will win. And then what?”

“Okada-san, I will go to this meeting and come back. And then we’ll see.”

“If something I did gets that child killed-”

“You did nothing but your duty. This is not about any failing of yours. It’s about guys who will do anything to get what they want. That’s what it’s always about. And you and I are lucky that we have the privilege to fight them. And we will fight them. And we will stop them. They think they’re samurai. They’re not. We’ll show them what samurai means.”

But Susan wasn’t convinced; Bob left her in a state of despair.

It had turned cold. The greenness of Japan had vanished. A cold wind blew, scattering dead leaves across the pavement of Yasukuni Shrine. On either side of the concrete esplanade, some trees stood tangled and severe; they looked like rusted barbed wire.

Bob stood under the steel gate. It towered above him, two steel shafts rising fifty feet to two steel crossbars, one mundane for stability, the other the great soaring wing that was the universal symbol of Japan, the torii gate with its architectural communication of the glory, the breadth, the scope, the power, the beauty, the immensity of Asia. Bob looked up into a blue sky at the top bar and saw immensity.

He shuddered. He was wearing a black suit and a raincoat, slightly underdressed for the weather. Outside the shrine parklands, Tokyo’s business hustled along its avenues, the honking and screeching of cars, the bustle of the endless parade of pedestrians. Here a few salarymen, a few tourists, a few visitors traversed the grounds in small knots, headed either to the shrine at the end of the walk or the samurai museum to the right of the grounds.

Bob checked his watch: 10:15 a.m. Of course, somewhere they were checking him out with binoculars, making certain he really was alone.

But then, from a knot of nondescript businessmen, one separated and ambled over to Bob.

Bob watched him approach. Was he expecting something special, someone whose demonic charisma seemed to carry its own internal light? He just saw a guy in a suit and a topcoat, with sunglasses, a broad but unimpressive face, dark hair cut into a bristly crew cut. As the figure approached, possibly he picked up vibrations of physical vitality, as if the man, under his dreary outerwear, possessed surprising strengths and agility. Or possibly it was his imagination.

“Greetings, I am the assassin Kondo Isami,” said the man in clear, accentless English, well polished, well schooled. “Who are you working for?”

Now that he faced him, Swagger felt a weird sense of familiarity. It was peculiar. What was so familiar? He spoke. “Philip Yano.”

“You’re not representing certain American adult-entertainment industry groups? You’re not a professional?”

“I would have nothing to do with that business. I don’t care for teacher-blowing-Johnny. But I’m professional enough to handle you.”

“You don’t represent government or any such official entity?”