Colonel McNair didn’t like it, having this man behind him. True, he would still have the high ground, but the other fellow now had the advantage. They walked up and up and up, single file, until they reached a clearing at the top. A panorama of cliffs and hazy seas greeted them. Almond trees and hibiscus. A wealth of flowers, growing wild on the heights.
“There are snakes in those bushes,” the colonel cautioned. Then, with a half smile, “They never bite officers, so I’m told. Professional courtesy, ah suppose.”
Colonel Andrew McNair, flight commander, Kadena Air Base, US Third Wing, carefully placed his briefcase on the ground and then turned his back in a calculated act of trust. He walked over, admired the view. “Fortress Britain,” he said. “That’s what they called it. It’s how the English defended their isle: at the very gates, drawbridge raised. Same way they built their castles. Thick walls meant to withhold a frontal assault. Y’all can see the same principles at play in the Battle of Britain. ‘We will fight on the shores and on the streets, we will never surrender.’ Their fortress island held—barely, but it held. Turned back the assault. Might well have been a medieval battle, the way they fought it. Japanese castles? Those are very different. The magnificence of a Japanese castle lies in its outer defenses; the central keep itself is really just decorative, made of wood—tends to burn. It’s the outer walls, designed to hold attackers back as far as possible, that is the key to Japanese defensive thinking. Works fine, too. Up to a point. Problem is, once those walls are breached, it all collapses. Okinawa was Japan’s outer wall. Was meant to hold back the barbarian hordes, keep ’em at bay. But after the outer walls fell, Japan lay naked and exposed. The line that stretches from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima runs directly through Okinawa.” He pointed to the next headland, jutting out, a slab of rock plunging into the ocean below. “Those cliffs, over there? That’s where they would’a jumped. Hundreds of ’em, thousands even. Leapt in pairs and groups, holding hands or alone. Entire families. Starving and frightened. Women and children, mothers holding babies, elderly ladies and elderly men.” He turned back around. “Even today, they call those the Suicide Rocks.”
His briefcase was still there.
“You’re not going to count it?” the colonel asked.
“Is there a reason I should?”
“No, I suppose not.” He looked inland now, past the small man to the coral landscape beyond, hills pocked with crevices and caves. “A Typhoon of Steel, that’s what we unleashed upon them.” By “we,” he meant Americans. The colonel wasn’t there, of course, hadn’t even been born when the Battle for Okinawa was underway; ancient history—but not quite. “Civilians hunkered down inside their turtleback tombs, took refuge among the dead as our artillery lay waste to their land. Then the Japanese soldiers came, forced them back out, into the open, took over their hiding places. It was a battle of the graves in many ways. At Tomari Port was an international cemetery. During the battle for Naha, American troops took cover under heavy fire, crouching behind the headstones of US sailors who’d been buried in Okinawa a hundred years earlier. The Sixth Marines fought their way through that graveyard, tomb by tomb. Hard to imagine.”
The small man reached inside his jacket, quietly withdrew a manila envelope, but the colonel wasn’t ready, not yet. He pointed out a hacksaw ridge of mountains running across the island. “My father,” he said.
The other man nodded. “A bad drop.”
“Yes, sir. A bad drop indeed. The paratroopers were coming in from—let’s see, over there, other side of that ridge. A gust of wind shoved three of ’em over, onto this side. That’s all it took. Just a single gust of wind. Funny isn’t it, how things can turn on something so trivial? They were captured and they were tortured—for what I am still not sure. They were GIs, didn’t have access to any military plans. I suppose their tormentors just wanted to vent their anger on someone. The Japanese tied up the first two—none of ’em over nineteen, you understand, just boys—used them for bayonet practice. And my father, well, they saved him for special treatment. From Kentucky, you see.”
The air was growing heavy. Clouds were boiling over.
“You’ve heard of him, the Kentucky Kid.” It wasn’t a question, not really. “Came from samurai stock. The Ono-Isu. As a young man, he had trained in the US, at West Point. Part’a some sort of Japanese-American military exchange. Was later stationed in Kentucky. Wasn’t treated very well during his stay, apparently. Nursed a grudge, it would seem. Honor and such. Or maybe he was just a garden-variety sociopath. Psycho or not, doesn’t really matter, ah suppose. He returned to Japan just before the war began, volunteered his services as an interpreter. That was his official designation, though ‘chief interrogator’ would be more accurate. I do believe it was the technicality of him being an interpreter following orders that allowed him to slip free of the war crimes tribunals that ensued. During the conflict, when the Japanese Imperial Army was steamrolling over the rest of Southeast Asia, he liked to visit the POW camps, would ask in a warm southern drawl, ‘Anyone here from Kentucky?’ Sure enough, a few youthful hands would go up, and they would be separated for singular consideration. By the time he got done with my dad, well, my dad was no longer there. Nineteen died somewhere in the process.”
The colonel walked himself into the shade and the small man followed with the briefcase. If he’d wanted to slip away with both the briefcase and the envelope, Colonel McNair would scarcely have noticed, or cared.
As they walked, the colonel spoke—to whom, it wasn’t clear. “He never really left Okinawa, my dad. The Kentucky Kid went on to have an illustrious career. My father? Not so much. But that’s okay. I understood. With every fall of the belt, I understood. I knew, He’s not hitting me, he’s hitting the Kentucky Kid. Never held it against my dad. How could I? My father was a war hero.” The path narrowed and they followed it around. “That was a singular bit of genius, by the way, going through the cemetery records like that. Never would’a thought of it, and even if I had, wouldn’t have known where to start. Would’ve assumed it had all been destroyed in the Typhoon of Steel. Didn’t realize there could be more than one family buried in an Okinawan tomb.”
A long path, overgrown. Crumbling walls. Not a castle, but the memory of. Not a fortress, but the echo of. “Y’hear that occasional crunch?” asked the colonel. “Those are pottery shards from China, a thousand years old.”
The wind was picking up. The weather was turning. Not a typhoon, but the precursor of.
“There’s these cone-like seashells you find on certain beaches down here. Delicate and beautiful, with intricate patterns on the surface. Makes for a terrific souvenir, except that these shells host a nasty creature: a certain type of snail with a poisonous barb on one end, like a harpoon. Injects a powerful venom. Highly toxic. Blinds its victims. Paralysis follows. Intense pain. Can’t talk, tongue swells. Y’start to drool. No known antidote. Wife of one of our servicemen, she brought a cone shell home with her as a memento of her time in Okinawa. The snail inside had curled back. She thought the shell was empty. But it wasn’t. Two weeks later, she’s holding it up, showing her book club and—well, you know how the story ends.”
“It’s how all stories end.”
“That’s the gospel truth, it surely is. My father in his grave these many years and Mr. Ono-Isu too. His son is doing well, though.”
They had reached the end of the path. Coral cliffs tumbling into the sea. The colonel turned, looked at the other man. “So, what’s next for you?”
“There’s a unicorn horn on Kume Island I need to inspect.”
“Unicorn? Really?”
“Narwhal. A tusk that was handed down from a royal prince four hundred years ago.”
The colonel nodded. He’s testing me. If police swarm Kume Island, he’ll know I can’t be trusted, he’ll know I talked, and he will be back. The colonel dry-chuckled, assuming a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “Well, if you’re gonna go huntin’ unicorns, I wish you good luck and G
odspeed. You certainly played Billy Moore for a fool, didn’t you? Harpooned him well and true.” The colonel said this with a certain admiration, but the response he got was sharp.
A red flash of anger. “I never lied to Mr. Moore. I do not traffic in falsehoods. I honored my side of the bargain. I always do. Mr. Moore was promised a great deal of money and the chance to disappear—forever. To become rich and then vanish, in that order.” He stepped closer, an underlying rage barely contained, his voice hitting every word like a blow: “I. Keep. My. Promises.”
The colonel felt his throat go dry. Disappeared, all right. With a shotgun to the face.
Then, softer, the small man asked, “And Agent Rhodes, how is she?”
“The skinny blond? Oh, she’s done, finished. Removed from active duty. Was transferred to the New York office, ah believe. Administrative.”
“A demotion, then?”
“Would appear so.”
“That’s a shame. She was a good agent, very good. She got closer than anyone else ever has. Did she— Did she take it personally?”
“How else could she? It was pretty bad at the end,” said the colonel. “She was having a nervous breakdown of some sort. Was talking about one-eyed kings and shadow worlds.”
“Erasmus,” said the small man. “She was quoting Erasmus. ‘In the Land of the Blind, the one-eyed man is king.’ Alas, that isn’t true. In the Land of the Blind, no one listens to the one-eyed man.” He held out the envelope. “This is what you came for.”
But the colonel didn’t take it. He turned his face to the sea instead. That dark horizon.
What he wanted to ask was: Were you really in the Congo, did the mercenaries you hired storm the Presidential Guards, capture the Kalinga drum? Did you track down a stolen Stradivarius, throw a Cockney yob from a window? Did you find Muhammad Ali’s missing gold medal? But the colonel knew he was only one or two questions away from certain death himself and so elected to say nothing.
Two tours of Afghanistan, under heavy fire in Iraq, staring down North Korean incursions in the East China Sea, but still he was unnerved by this small, unassuming man with the forgettable face.
Incoming waves.
The swell and sudden drop of the ocean. A sea without color, not even gray. Colonel McNair finally accepted the envelope, with a lack of enthusiasm that surprised even him. He slid it open, tilted the contents into his palm: a pair of rusted tin tabs, stamped with Japanese characters. These would be the dog tags of Lieutenant Musashi of the Ono-Isu family, Okinawan Forty-Second Army.
“You saw his bones?”
“I saw his bones.”
“So, he really is dead.”
“Has been for some time.”
The colonel held the tags in his hand as though weighing them. They were so light they were barely there. He could feel the small man watching him.
“What will you do?” the small man asked. “Now that you have them.”
“Y’know, I imagined this moment. Thought about it for a long time. Figured, first I would piss on them, then melt ’em down, then mold them into the tip of a bullet, fire it into the heart of his son. Now? Now I’m not so sure.”
The cicadas had stopped and the circling birds had taken shelter. A stronger wind was shaking the trees.
“I will tell you a story,” said the colonel. “It is the story of two bodies: a little girl under a castle and a boy in a tree. During the Battle for Okinawa, the American bombardment cleared away layers of history, exposed old secrets. And after the war was over, when they were excavating one of those fallen castles—not far from here, in fact—they unearthed the skeleton of a young girl buried under the foundations. Fourteenth century. From her position, it was clear she had been sacrificed, placed there as an offering. If it hadn’t been for our bombardment, she would never have been found, would never have been laid to rest or given the burial she deserved. Okinawa is full of restless ghosts.”
“And the boy in the tree?”
“Oh, that’s one of ours. Not the boy, but the handiwork. In the Battle of Mabuni, north of here, the villagers were trapped, caught between retreating Japanese troops and advancing American forces, between the hammer and the anvil. Hundreds of children died. The entire village was razed. Whole entire landscape was systematically pulverized. Some forty years later, a banyan tree brought up a young boy’s shoe embedded in its roots. There were shards of human bone inside. Youth is always sacrificed, isn’t it? In castles or in trees. We think the past is buried, but it always pushes through.”
The colonel held out his arm, as far as he could, let the dog tags slip from his fingers, watched them tumble as they fell, end over end, until they disappeared. There was no way to know if they ever hit the water. Might very well have been blown inward, gotten tangled on a branch or caught on an outcrop. It didn’t matter anymore.
When the colonel turned around, the small man was gone. Later, the colonel would look up the phrase “brave day” online. It was British in origin, a greeting common to certain areas of Scotland, Wales—and Northern Ireland.
DAYS: BRAVE AND OTHERWISE
The Okinawan archipelago of southern Japan runs along the outer edge of the East China Sea. Drowned mountains, coral reefs, a dragon ascending. An arc of outcrops and outposts, a jagged curve of vertebrae: these are islands of the Black Current. The Kuroshio is a river in the sea, one hundred kilometers wide, that flows up from the Philippines, drawing warm waters and turbulent weather with it as it goes, until it comes at last into conflict with colder, northern currents. The monsoons of spring, the typhoons of fall: it all begins here. Hateruma Island, at the southern tip of the spine, is where the Black Current first touches Japanese territory.
—T. Rafferty, “Okinawa: A Land of Contrasts,” Island Views, Jan/Feb 2004
Gaddy Rhodes dog-eared the article, put the glossy travel magazine into a creased folder marked HATERUMA. Years out of date and nothing worth noting, but she saved it anyway. There was so little written about that small island at the end of nowhere, and what there was, was paltry: references to sandy beaches, sunny skies, an academic essay on traditional beliefs and priestesses. Magical trails and spirit lines. Gaddy wasn’t interested in any of that.
“Knock knock!”
God how she hated that, how her fellow cubicle-bound colleagues at Interpol’s New York office insisted on pretending they all had doors. Knock knock. Just come in, for chrissake.
It was the curly-haired pup from two cubicles over. Patrick, was that his name? She wasn’t sure. Big smile, electric teeth.
“Cathy’s card,” he singsonged. “Don’t forget.”
Card? What card?
“It’s with Sue, at reception. Supposed to be a surprise, so don’t say anything!”
“Retiring?”
His smile faltered. “Birthday. Why would she be retiring? She’s, like, thirtysomething.” Then, looking at the image on her computer. “In the market for a new urinal, are you?”
The image was labeled PARIS 1917.
“What? No. That’s—that’s an iconic work of art. Modern art.”
“Looks like a urinal.”
“It is a urinal.” At the 1917 Paris Exhibition, a disgruntled artist named Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal with the name ‘R. Mutt’ and then hanged it alongside other, more traditional pieces in the gallery. It was an audacious act: part protest, part manifesto. For many, this autographed urinal marked the birth of modern art. But how to explain this to Patrick of the Curly Hair? “The original is lost,” she said. “Probably forever. But the artist signed sixteen other identical urinals. Over the last ten years, someone has been quietly buying up these replicas—and destroying them, one by one, so that in the end there will only be one left.”
“Why?”
“Well, when there’s only one left, its value will soar.”
His attention shifted to the jar of murky liquor on her desk shelf. “Nice,” he said, so flatly it could be taken only as sarcasm.
While ot
her cubicle denizens had photographs of children and spouses, or crayon art and World’s Greatest Dad mugs, Gaddy’s desk sported a large bottle of awamori with a habu coiled inside, jaw distended, fangs bared. Dragon liquor. Leaning against this formaldehyde curiosity was a folder stuffed with loose papers, marked FINDER.
“The snake. A friend of yours?”
“A souvenir. It’s from Okinawa, my last field assignment—” but he didn’t care.
“Just make sure you stop by reception later. Don’t forget, okay? Coffee and cake in the common room to follow.”
She said. “I don’t like coffee. I drink tea.”
Exasperated. “That’s just an expression. I’m sure there will be—Whatever. Just sign the card, okay?”
So she trudged down to see Sue, the swivel chair sentry, who was manning the desk across from the elevators on their third-floor hideout. “Something about a card?” said Gaddy.
Brightly. “Right!” She produced a comically large cartoon of a card. Lordy, lordy, look who’s forty!
Behind reception, a piece of sky. Buildings were lined up like mismatched books on a shelf. Among them, an undistinguishable block noticeable only because of the gridwork crane that was now perched atop it. A grit of smoke was rising up.
“The hotel,” she said.
Swivel Chair Sue, pirouetting. “That? Tearing it down, I think.”
Of course they were tearing it down. Anyone could see that; the top floor was already gone. Why didn’t they just implode the damn thing, get it over with? Why this slow, methodical erasure?
Gaddy walked over to the window, stared through her own reflection at the modest chunk of skyline beyond. She knew that hotel, knew it well. An uninspired arrangement of brick and beams, five floors, no balconies, the Commonwealth Inn had stood vacant for years, had been turned into a women’s shelter at one point, then a used furniture depot (ground floor only), then a “dream center” (whatever that was) and now? It was finally going down, for good this time. She twisted her empty ring finger. GR + ML 4 VR.
The Finder Page 10
