Daughter of the Sword

by Steve Bein

  “Captured enemy, sir. There are rules in warfare.”

  “You’re going to tell me about rules?” Matsumori’s voice boomed. He threw his cigarette at Keiji; it bounced off his chest and smoked on the floor. “There are rules against forgery, you stupid son of a bitch, and rules against desertion too. You’re lucky I don’t have you hanged from what’s left of this building. I’d leave you dangling from a rafter for all your friends and relatives to see. Hell, I’d even cart your little blind girl up there so she could get a good whiff of your rotting corpse, if only I didn’t need every man I’ve got.”

  Matsumori was an inch from Keiji’s nose now; Keiji could feel the spittle flecking from his lips. “You look like you’ve got something to say, Kiyama. Care to say it?”

  “Sir,” Keiji said, “I must protest my innocence. I did all that I did for the sake of the country. For duty, sir.”

  “Duty,” Matsumori growled. “Oh, you’re a genuine samurai, aren’t you, Kiyama? Maybe you’d like to slit your belly open on my office floor, neh? That’s how they protested their innocence in the old days. How about it?”

  “They also protested by challenging their accusers to a duel, sir.”

  Matsumori jerked his pistol free and crammed it into the underside of Keiji’s chin. “I’m a general, Kiyama. You don’t threaten me lightly.” His face was like a snarling dog’s, furrowed and furious. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t spray your brains all over this room.”

  “Honor,” said Keiji.

  Matsumori’s eyes widened ever so slightly. He returned the pistol to its holster. His face was still so close that Keiji could feel the heat of his breath. “You actually believe this samurai shit, don’t you? You’re living in a fairy tale. First you rescue the little blind girl, then you charge in on your warhorse and challenge big, bad Matsumori to a heroic duel. Was that it? Is that the future your cripple saw for you?”

  No, Keiji was going to say, but then a puzzle piece fell into place. Matsumori. The name meant “pine grove,” but “grove” was not the only meaning of mori; with a different kanji, it could mean “protect” or “defend.” Matsumori would then mean “protector of the pines.”

  “You’re the forest spirit,” Keiji whispered, not even meaning to say it aloud. “She saw you from the beginning. You’re the one who destroys everything.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “No, do tell, Kiyama. I’m all ears.”

  “Hayano told me about you. She said the defender of the trees might destroy its friends as well as its enemies. You’re the defender of the trees.”

  Matsumori didn’t even dignify Keiji with a response. He turned his back and walked over to sit behind his desk. “I’ve given you every opportunity to save your career,” he said. “Do you know what I’m going to do now? I’m going to fulfill your wish.” The general removed his cap and slapped it flat on his desk. “You want to be a samurai? You want to fly around the world to some damn island far away from your little blind girl and your sick mom? Fine. Consider yourself demoted, Sergeant Kiyama. I’m making you a platoon leader. You’re going to take Guadalcanal. Then you’re going to jump to every island after that, and you’re going to raise my flag on every last one of them. I’m going to teach you the meaning of the word ‘duty,’ Sergeant. I’m going to teach you ‘honor’ and ‘glory’ and ‘victory’ even if I need American bullets to drive the point home. Now get the hell out of my sight.”

  70

  18th May, Shōwa 17

  Dear Father,

  Thank you for your last letter. I was so very sorry to hear about Mother’s death and am sorrier still that I could not be home for you and for her. Lately I feel every decision I make leads me further astray, and this failure is the most painful of all.

  It gladdens me to know that Hayano-chan is a buoy for you in these sad times. I would thank you for continuing to care for her, but it seems perhaps I should also thank her for continuing to care for you. Let me say instead that I am grateful that both of you can support each other, since I am so far away and cannot do my part as a filial son.

  My lone success is one you will be happy to learn of: we have taken Guadalcanal. The nearby islands are expected to fall in the coming days, but my platoon has been reassigned to the construction of an airstrip, so I will see no more fighting. I will not write of combat this time; the brutality of it is still too near for me, and there is already too much death at home.

  I have heard rumors that my former commanding officer, General Matsumori, will be promoted thanks to our victory here. I am told he will serve directly under General Tōjō. Obviously this is the highest honor for him, but I fear things will go poorly for our country because of it. Hayano-chan foresaw that Matsumori would either destroy his enemies or destroy his friends, and I now fear it will be the latter, for she also saw that Japan would not see victory in this war. It sickens me that I was so slow to decipher her message; I could have changed the future if only I had been quicker to see what she showed me.

  Now I fear matters will become worse. Since my demotion I no longer receive all the intelligence I once did, but I would be very surprised if the Americans make no plans to oust us from these islands. I do not know how that will go. If we have time enough we may be able to fortify our positions, but their country is so large, and their people so many. Their factories will be producing weapons of war every day. While I still served under General Matsumori, I read terrible things about how they treat the Japanese within their own borders; it frightens me that I may become their prisoner.

  More frightening still is the thought that the homeland should fall and the emperor be unseated. I left my sword at home so that you and Mother and Hayano would be protected. Now it seems the air raid that struck all around our home was indeed an act of desperation, not to be repeated anytime soon. (How long ago was it since we heard the bombs falling? Only a month? Is that possible? It seems so long ago—so much has happened since then!—but the calendar tells me it is so.) I am of two minds now, and since these days all of my choices go awry, I ask you to choose for me.

  I should like my sword to remain at home, to protect you and Hayano-chan and anyone else who might take shelter there in the event of another air raid. I am quite convinced it will keep any building safe so long as it stays there.

  But I should also like the sword to find a place in the imperial household. If Hayano-chan is right, and the empire is to lose this war, then at the very least I do not want the Americans and Russians and British to choose what government Japan shall take. This has been their habit all across Asia, and I do not want Japan to go the way of all the other European and American conquests. Our national spirit is the samurai spirit. If the enemy should depose our emperor, I fear that our homeland’s spirit may be broken, and I believe the power of Tiger on the Mountain may protect against that dreadful day.

  I have no inkling how to advise you. My duty as a son bids me to ask you to keep the sword for your own protection. My duty as a soldier would have me ask you to find some way to deliver the sword to the imperial palace. I feel as thin as a sheet of paper, and as frail; I feel I am being torn in two.

  I can only suggest that you explain the decision to Hayano-chan and rely on her insight. My bitterest regret is that I did not put greater faith in her myself.

  Please give my love to her. I think of her every day, and I miss her terribly. Of course I miss Mother too; whenever my thoughts go to her, I feel as though I am falling headlong down a well, and I need to pull my thoughts away before I fall too far. I miss you as well, Father, and I am so very sorry that I cannot be with you in your days of loss. I cannot imagine how I might make up for my mistakes, but I hope that I can survive this war and return home to do my best to try.

  Yours,

  Keiji

  BOOK NINE

  HEISEI ERA, THE YEAR 22

  (2010 CE)

  71

  Saori’s phone was a bust. Yamada had been rig
ht about his protégé: the sword’s power was not yet so complete that he had lost all reason. Fuchida had wised up, and HRT found the phone dumped in the backseat of a taxi. “Keep it for prints,” Mariko told the HRT commander over the phone. She rode shotgun in a squad car on its way to the morgue, screaming down a canyon of asphalt and steel and light. Headlights and taillights traced ghost lines in her bleary vision, streetlights flitted by overhead, huge LED displays flashed on every side, and the lights of the squad splashed stroboscopic red over everything. “We know Fuchida’s our guy, but it won’t hurt the prosecutor to have another piece of evidence. And interview the taxi driver. See if he remembers anything.”

  “Already on it, Sergeant. He says a long-haired guy stopped him and asked how much it would cost to get to Narita. We’re guessing your suspect dropped the phone on the sly while he had the door open.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ve spoken with Narita security already, and I’m sending men—”

  “Don’t bother. He’s not flying anywhere. He’s got his hostage; public places aren’t on his agenda. Besides, he’s in an awful hurry to get his ransom by tomorrow; no way he’s leaving the country today.”

  “Good point.”

  “Find out where Fuchida hailed the cab. The bastard’s got to be hiding somewhere nearby. It’ll be a place a woman could scream without being heard. A good-sized room, I think; I heard him take three or four steps to get to the hostage after he set down the phone.”

  “Will do.”

  “One more thing. If Fuchida’s in a hurry, maybe it’s because he’s keeping his supplier waiting. Or maybe his supplier’s on his way here as we speak, and Fuchida needs to meet him. I take it back: go ahead and contact Narita. The port authorities too, here and in Yokohama. Tell them to tighten up all cargo checks. They’re looking for cocaine. Focus on foreign carriers and ships out of foreign ports. But keep your team in the area; maybe we’ll get lucky and find where Fuchida’s holed up.”

  “We’re on it, Sergeant.”

  The HRT commander hung up just as Mariko’s squad pulled into the roundabout in front of the hospital. Mariko thanked the driver, then went inside and down to the morgue.

  It was already late; it was likely the family would not come until morning. Mariko felt someone should be there for them, someone who could tell them what had happened to Dr. Yamada. And the morgue was as good a place to sit as any. She had no desire to go home; as badly as she wanted to sleep, dreams of Yamada’s blood and Saori’s squeals were not what she needed right now. Better to drift off in a strange place where she knew she could only sleep lightly. Dreamlessly.

  Downstairs she found an old woman in white, wearing huge black Chanel sunglasses. She looked older than Mariko’s grandmother, and she stood facing a window Mariko had seen before. There would be a body on the other side of it, and Mariko wondered whose it was. Yamada’s would not be the only one here; in a city of thirteen million, any given hospital would have any number of corpses to deal with.

  But the old woman turned to Mariko and said, “You’re here for him too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll have known him as Yamada Yasuo, I think,” said the old woman. “How did you meet him?”

  “He was my sensei.…” Mariko said in a fog. “Wait—who are you? How did you get here? He’s only been dead an hour. They can’t have called the next of kin already.”

  Mariko was speaking as much to herself as to anyone, and much too quietly for most women this one’s age to hear. But the old woman said, “I saw it. His death, I mean. It makes me so sad. And for his own student to kill him. Tragic.”

  Mariko wondered whether she’d fallen asleep. “This is surreal,” she said. “You can’t know any of this. No one here knows any of it yet, and I just got here.”

  The old woman looked at her. “My dear, you sound exhausted. You could use a good night’s sleep, I think.”

  She was right. But even in its exhausted state Mariko’s mind was still a detective’s mind. Details still beckoned her attention, like the fact that this woman looked straight at her and yet said Mariko sounded tired. And the big black sunglasses, still on in a basement room at night.

  This woman was blind. Mariko almost said so, but then remembered Yamada-sensei chiding her on his porch when she’d said the same to him. Instead she said, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Shoji Hayano. Keiji-san and I have been friends for a long, long time. Since before your parents were born, I think.”

  “Why do you call him Keiji-san?”

  “Why, that’s his name. Kiyama Keiji. He only changed it to Yamada after the war. You couldn’t get into graduate school with a dishonorable discharge. Not in those days. He had no choice but to change it. And oh, did he feel guilty for it! But I think leaving his name behind let him leave some of his other guilt behind.”

  Mariko still felt swamped by surreality. This woman spoke as anime characters spoke. She could have been a witch, or a dragon sitting on a giant mushroom, for that matter. She spoke as if Mariko had been in the anime all along, privy to the plot and therefore able to follow the bizarre conversation through all its twists and turns.

  Mariko dropped herself in a nearby chair; her brain was working too hard for her to exert the effort to stand up as well. Still she collected the details. The chair’s padding was clad in cracking green vinyl, and a metal leg missing its rubber foot scritched against the linoleum floor when her weight hit the seat. Shoji Hayano stood with two fingers resting lightly on the narrow metal ledge that framed the large plate glass window of the morgue’s viewing room. Mariko herself had not yet walked as far as she’d need to in order to see her sensei’s body through that window. She thought about that fact for a second, analyzing her motives—but only for a second.

  “Guilt. You said Yamada-sensei felt a lot of guilt. For what?”

  “Why, for not destroying the sword when he had the chance, of course. There were other things too. He was not there when his mother died, but I always told him not to feel guilty about that. We must not feel guilty for what we cannot control, dear. You need to learn that lesson too.”

  “Lady, you don’t know anything about me.”

  Shoji smiled a cute little-old-lady smile. “Child, I see more than you think.”

  “Yeah, I’m getting that feeling,” Mariko said. Mariko was good with details, but this woman was something else. She spoke with unnerving familiarity—the same kind that Yamada had so often spoken with, the kind magicians spoke with when they knew which card you’d picked while you were just certain there was no way anyone could know.

  “If you don’t mind,” Mariko said, “I’m going to step way out of line and offer to buy you a cup of coffee. I know you and I just met, but I have this feeling there’s a lot for us to talk about. There’ll be a cafeteria someplace upstairs. Would you join me?”

  “I’d love to, dear.”

  72

  The café was nothing special. Old coffee and older muffins, and that antiseptic hospital smell. After a single cup of the stale, bitter coffee, Mariko switched over to green tea, which happened to be what Shoji was drinking.

  “Keiji-san’s student will call on you,” Shoji said, her glasses fogging with steam from the tea. “You must offer him twice as much as he asks for.”

  “How do you—?” Mariko didn’t even know how to finish the question. How do you know Fuchida will call? How do you know Fuchida will ask for a ransom? How do you suppose I’m going to give him double what he’s asking for when he’s not asking for money? His ransom demand is only a sword; how do you think I’m going to double that?

  None of those questions were worth asking, for none of them could be answered. The old woman couldn’t know any of the things she’d need to know to answer them. So instead Mariko asked, “Am I right in thinking you’re blind?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Is that how you met Yamada-sensei? You had the same doctor or something?”


  Shoji laughed, a thousand crinkles deepening in her cheeks. “Oh, no. I lost my sight when I was a little girl. Keiji-san didn’t lose his until both of us were old and gray.”

  Something in the way she said it made Mariko think they’d been more than friends. And not lovers, that was certain; Shoji seemed to think of him like a brother, but one who was both many years older and many years younger. At times she spoke of him with reverence, the kind little children have for their adult siblings. Yet at other times her tone was protective, bordering on paternalistic, as if her vision extended far beyond his. She and Yamada had been close, but not so close that Shoji knew Fuchida’s name; she referred to him only as “Keiji-san’s student.” Yet Yamada and Fuchida had been close too—Mariko was sure of that much; he’d always spoken of Fuchida with deep concern—and so once again Yamada-sensei proved to be an enigma. Who was Shoji to him? Was she as important to him as he so obviously was to her? And if so, why had Mariko never heard of her?

  Yet another list of riddles Mariko had no time to solve. She could only address the most pressing question: “What makes you say Yamada’s student will call me?”

  “He must,” Shoji said with a shrug. “You can give him what he needs. And he will take it from you before the end.”

  “This is crazy. You’re talking about him as if all of this has already—”

  A vibration from Mariko’s purse cut her off. She unfolded the phone with her short, blunt thumbnail. “Detective Oshiro,” the deep voice said. “You know who this is.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “That wasn’t nice of you, conning me into keeping your sister’s phone. I barely got rid of it before all your officers arrived.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “You’re lucky your sister is still in one piece. I ought to kill her for what you did.”

  He was angry, dangerously so; his quivering voice suggested his body was shaking too. Shoji reached a wrinkled hand across the table and touched Mariko’s fingers. “Offer him the sword,” she whispered.