Savage's muscles felt drained. Sitting cross-legged on the cushions at the low cypress table, he leaned back on his hips and tried to diffuse his tension. “How do you know this?” His voice was strained, a whisper.

“I seclude myself. But my many former students remain in contact. And they have reliable sources. Kunio Shirai… for motives I admire… has the potential to cause a disaster. Aggression, not consolidation. All I want is peace. But if Shirai pushes harder, if he finds a way to attract even larger and more zealous followers…”

Savage spun toward Akira. “Does what happened… or didn't happen… at the Medford Gap Mountain Retreat have something to do with this?”

Akira raised his increasingly melancholy eyes. “Tarosensei referred to seclusion. At my father's home, which I maintain, I preserve a piece of the past, though I'm seldom there to enjoy it. I wish now I had enjoyed it. Because after everything that's happened I no longer believe in protecting others. I want to protect myself. To retreat. Like Taro-sensei. Like the Tokugawa Shogunate.”

“Then I guess we'd damned well better talk to Shirai,” Savage said. “I'm tired of being manipulated.” He glanced toward Rachel and put an arm around her. “And I'm tired,” he added, “of being a follower, a servant, a watchdog, a shield. It's time I took care of what I want.” Again he glanced with undisguised love toward Rachel.

“In that case, you'll lose your soul,” Taro said. “The Way of the protector, the fifth profession, is the noblest-”

“Enough,” Savage said. “All I want to do is… Akira, what do you say? Are you ready to help me finish this?”

BLACK SHIPS

1

“What are they shouting?” Savage asked.

The seething crowd roared louder, some jerking placards, others shaking their fists. Their furious movements reminded Savage of a roiling river. It was ten A.M. Despite smog, the sun was blinding, and Savage raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare as he studied the enormous mob that filled the street for blocks, their fury directed toward the U.S. embassy. How many? Savage thought. He found it impossible to count. An estimate? Perhaps as many as twenty thousand demonstrators. They chanted rhythmically, repeating the same brief slogan with greater intensity until the din-amplified echoing off buildings-made Savage's temples throb.

“They're shouting ‘Black ships,’ ” Akira said.

In a moment, the translation became needless, the demonstrators changing to English. From last night's conversation with Taro, Savage understood the reference. Black ships. The armada that America 's Commodore Perry had anchored in Yokohama Bay in 1853. As a symbol of the demonstrators’ antipathy to America 's presence in Japan, the image was fraught with emotion. Succinct. Effective.

But lest the message nonetheless fail to make its point, the mob chanted something new. “ America out! Gaijin out!”

EPILOGUE. THE KEY TO THE MAZE

FORTUNE'S HOSTAGE

What seemed an eternity ago, when Savage had met Rachel's sister, Joyce Stone, in Athens and gone with her to the Parthenon, he'd quoted from Shelley's “Ozymandias” to describe the lesson of those ruins.

“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

… Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Joyce Stone had understood: “Nothing-wealth, fame, power-is permanent.” Indeed. Take nothing for granted. The future confronts, interprets, and more often than not, mocks the past. History. False memory. Disinformation. These issues, as much as his nightmare, haunted Savage. The paradox of, the relentlessness of, the deceit and treachery of time.

The truths of Shelley's poem soon became evident. After the discovery of the massacre at Kunio Shirai's mountain retreat, the Japanese news media inundated its readers, viewers, and listeners with reports and speculations for seemingly endless weeks. Intrigued as much as baffled, the nation demanded increasingly more details.

One item that attracted obsessive attention was the discovery of a diary that Shirai had kept. As he'd said to Savage and Akira, he intended to create a legend, convinced that the nation would talk about it for a thousand years. Of course, in his diary Shirai did not reveal the lie at the core of the legend. Instead he attempted to bolster the legend by comparing himself to great historical figures, to Japanese heroes who'd so boldly altered the course of their nation's history that they'd achieved the magnificence of myth. Shirai's intention had evidently been to release the diary shortly before or after his death, so his followers could revere his written legacy just as they worshiped his kami.

The hero whom Shirai most identified with was Oshio Heihachiro, a political activist in the nineteenth century. Outraged by the poverty of the lower classes, Oshio had organized a revolt, so committed to his cause that he'd sold his belongings to buy swords and firearms for starving farmers. In 1837, his rebels sacked and burned rich estates. The city of Osaka was soon in flames. However, the authorities managed to defeat the revolt. Oshio's followers were executed, but only after being tortured. Oshio himself was caught and avoided dishonor by committing seppuku.

Shirai's decision to compare himself with this particular hero seemed puzzling at first, and Shirai admitted as much in his diary. After all, Oshio's rebellion, though brave, had ended in defeat. But Shirai went on to explain that the cause for which Oshio sacrificed his life had consequences of which Shirai greatly approved. After Commodore Perry's “black ships” anchored in Yokohama Bay in 1853, a new generation of rebels protested America 's demand that Japan lift its cultural quarantine and allow foreigners to import mechandise, to become a satellite of the West. Inspired by Oshio's principles, these new rebels reaffirmed the cultural purity of the Tokugawa Shogunate. They insisted on the mystical uniqueness of their nation, their god-ordained nihonjinron, their divine Japaneseness bequeathed to them by the sun goddess, Amaterasu. Warriors, masterless samurai who called themselves shishi, swore to expel all intruding foreigners and in some cases slaughtered Western settlers. Shirai emphasized deceitfully in his diary that he didn't advocate bloodshed but rather an overwhelming political movement in which the Force of Amaterasu would accomplish the dream of Oshio's later followers, “Expel the barbarians,” and return Japan to Japan.

When put in this context, Oshio did seem the proper hero for Shirai to emulate. But there were ironic disturbing implications that Shirai either didn't recognize or didn't want to admit, for his diary abruptly changed topic and described its author's patriotic zeal in conceiving, organizing, and unleashing the Force of Amaterasu, which his diary took for granted would be successful. The implications that Shirai's diary ignored were that Oshio's later followers had taken their dead leader's principles-”Feed the poor”-to such an extreme that “Expel the barbarians” and “Keep Japan pure” became synonymous with “Revere the emperor.” Since 1600, the Tokugawa Shogunate had insisted on keeping the emperor in the background, in Kyoto, far from the shogun's center of power in what is now called Tokyo. But the zealots, who unwittingly perverted Oshio's intentions, so identified their Japaneseness with the former sanctity of the imperial institution that they insisted on reinstating it, on bringing the emperor from Kyoto to the shogun's capital, and on reaffirming him as a symbol of the greatness of Japan.