by Barry Eisler
I caught a cab in front of Hibiya Park, and had the driver take me straight to the museum. As we got close, I told him to circle the grounds—I was early, I said, and with the braced leg, now resting across the seat, the cab was the most comfortable place to sit. He did as I asked, and, as we drove, I refreshed my recollection of the terrain. The grounds themselves were spacious and parklike—long, grassy slopes and clusters of trees spread like a carpet of green around a half dozen gray buildings clustered in the interior. The perimeter was entirely encircled by iron-barred fences, the highest of which was the northwestern; the lowest of which, and the only one not topped with spikes, was the southwestern, which was also the one with the visitors’ gate. I supposed the spikes were intended to be more decorative than functional. From a security standpoint, making one wall formidable while leaving another vulnerable didn’t make a lot of sense.
If Victor expected me to come hunting for him, and I assumed he did, he might anticipate that I’d avoid the visitors’ gate, choosing instead a less-obvious route. And the most obvious less-obvious route would be over that low, nonspiked southwestern wall. Which is why I rejected it.
On the second trip around, I decided I liked the southeastern side. The spiked fence was about seven feet high there, but there was a metal access door in the middle with no spikes on top that I could get over in seconds. Again, a pretty glaring weakness from a security perspective, but as Maria had pointed out, there weren’t a lot of museum robberies in Japan.
Still. That’s just where Victor would expect you.
Shit. Was I being paranoid? He couldn’t risk an ambush site that didn’t give him a view of the museum entrance, could he? Because if he chose wrong, he’d miss me entirely. The entrance was the choke point. He needed eyes on that.
Still, I decided the metal door was just a bit too obvious a vulnerability. I’d do better to choose a spot slightly less tempting.
On the third trip around, I asked the driver to slow down. There, on the northwest corner, the fence disappeared behind a small copse of trees. It was still high and spiked and not at all inviting, but the trees would provide some concealment. I’d noticed a few other spots like it, too, so even if Victor were anticipating my thinking, it would still be a coin toss as to which such spot I’d choose to breach the fence. He’d have no choice but to default to somewhere that gave him a view of the museum entrance. Meaning I’d be fine on the entry. Whatever happened was going to happen after that.
I thanked the driver for circling and had him take me to the entrance, looking left and right as we pulled up. It was only early afternoon, and I couldn’t imagine Victor would set up this early—it might be a long wait, meaning a long time to be exposed. But I wasn’t taking anything for granted. I saw nothing that set off any alarms—no gardeners, no homeless, no loitering people at all, just a few clusters of ordinary-looking visitors.
I paid the driver, then hobbled up the stairs, checking potential hotspots as I moved. All clear. Inside, I scoped the lobby. Again, all clear. And no sign of Maria, either, or of Director Kurosawa. If I ran into them, I had a story prepared about visiting the museum to learn more before my interviews, despite a leg injury incurred during judo, a story I would deliver as though abashed at having my ardor for museum work discovered—concealing the commission of a greater crime by the apparent confession of a lesser one. But I had a feeling Maria would be busy with final touches on her exhibit. As for Kurosawa, I sensed he spent most of his time in his cave of an office, surrounded by treasured artifacts.
There was a guard to my left. I waved and made my way over, leaning heavily on the cane and grimacing slightly as though from pain or effort.
“Pardon me,” I said. “Can you tell me where to find the elevator? The stairs in front were hard enough.”
He glanced quickly at the leg brace and the cane—anything longer would have been rude—and nodded sympathetically, not seeming the least bit suspicious. And why would he be? I wasn’t trying to conceal anything. I’d openly approached him with a question completely congruent with my own obvious discomfiture. And thereby established the leg brace in his mind as . . . nothing more than a leg brace. The way a hammer can be established as nothing more than a hammer.
“Of course,” he said. “Around the corner to the right of the stairs.”
I gave him a slight bow and hobbled ostentatiously away. I stopped in a restroom, where in a stall I loosened all but one of the Velcro straps around the brace. The black case the brace had come in was already alongside my leg, indistinguishable from the brace itself. Then I headed out to the elevator.
Two minutes later, I was standing outside the basement storage room, my heart beating hard. Maria had confirmed that security was low, but that didn’t mean Murphy’s law was in abeyance. If someone came along, my only plan was to pull off the last strip of Velcro, lose the brace, and run. But inside a minute, courtesy of the lockpicks, the excellent tutelage of my erstwhile teacher, and my own ardent practice, I had defeated the lock and was inside. I closed the door behind me, flipped on the lights, and then jammed the handle of the cane up under the doorknob, kicking the rubber-capped bottom along the floor until I was certain the door was firmly stuck. If someone happened to come by, hopefully he would assume something was wrong with the door and go to get maintenance or other help, giving me time to slip away. Plus, this way, I couldn’t forget the cane.
I headed straight to the swords. I lifted the one I had handled the other day, my favorite, and then, as though checking a pistol for a chambered round, pulled back the wood tsuka hilt just enough to visually confirm the blade was indeed inside the shirasaya scabbard. I eased the blade back in place, then slipped the closed scabbard into the black case alongside my outer leg. I secured the Velcro straps, tightening the package against my leg, hobbled to the door, kicked loose the cane, killed the lights, and cracked the door to check the corridor. All clear. It looked like Mr. Murphy wasn’t going to show up today. At least not yet.
Back at the elevator, I was in luck again—it was still on the basement level, so I didn’t have to wait or risk it arriving with a museum employee inside. I got on, and pressed the button for the second floor. But it stopped on the ground level. I concentrated on breathing naturally, forcing away the knowledge that I had just stolen a priceless samurai sword, and focusing instead on who I was—just a salaryman, probably newly unemployed and therefore ashamed, hiding from the world with a visit to the museum.
The doors opened and, despite my efforts, for an instant I imagined I saw Maria—but it was only a group of elderly museumgoers. They filed on around me, several of them glancing at the cane sympathetically, and then the doors closed, and we continued to the second floor. None of them could have been less than twice my age, but still they made a show of letting me hobble off before them. I supposed doing so made them feel hale in comparison. As for me, I was glad the brace and the cane were attracting the proper attention.
I badly wanted to get the hell out of the museum in case anyone noticed the sword was missing and sounded some kind of alarm. But I didn’t want the guard to see me leaving too quickly, which would have seemed odd, and I didn’t want to kill the time in an exhibit, either, where there was a chance, however small, that I would run into Maria or Director Kurosawa. So I ducked into a restroom and slipped inside one of the stalls. I closed my eyes and breathed steadily in and out, my heart rate slightly elevated.
I realized what I had just done was foolish. There were other swords available in Tokyo, including quality imitations, that would have served well enough. Why did I want this one? Why take that risk?
I wasn’t sure. It had just felt so right that time with Maria, when I’d held it in my hands. Like the sword was an extension of me—or I an extension of it. It was something bound up in my childhood in Japan, and, at the same time, something I’d connected with again so recently, after so much time and circumstance. Of course, all that had been no more than coincidence. But somehow . . . it felt
like more.
Yeah. Maybe my thinking had been talismanic, but I didn’t want to be holding just any sword when I faced Victor.
I wanted it to be this one.
I spent the next forty minutes focusing on my breathing, not thinking about what I had just done, not thinking of what I had to do next, just waiting, and focusing on that.
When I judged I’d been there long enough, I flushed the toilet and eased out of the stall. I had almost made it to the door when it opened. And Director Kurosawa shuffled in.
He squinted and looked right at me. There was nowhere to go. I couldn’t even turn away. I prepared to deliver my rehearsed story.
I had opened my mouth, the words on the verge of tumbling out, when I realized—he was going right past me. I stifled the urge to speak and just kept hobbling along. Had the cane and the brace thrown him off? Maybe. That, and the fact that his eyes were probably as weak as his ears.
I’d meant to pause at the door and check the corridor before leaving, but that would have seemed odd. So I left without looking, started to turn right—and saw Maria heading straight toward me, a pair of young Japanese men, who I took to be museum staff, alongside her.
Fuck. I pivoted and hobbled the other way, hunching over the cane, doing all I reasonably could to change my posture and persona. As soon as I rounded the corner, I headed into the Fashion of the Edo Period exhibit and moved more quickly, trying to put more distance between us. A few visitors glanced at me, the echoes of my oddly cadenced footfalls and the squeak of the rubber end of the cane catching their attention, probably wondering why the man in the leg brace seemed to be in such a hurry. But I was less concerned about attention from strangers than I was about seeing Maria, and kept to my brisk pace. By the time I was through the exhibit and had rounded the next corner, Maria and her small entourage were nowhere behind me. I headed down the main stairs, gripping the bannister and hopping on my “good” leg.
Naturally, the guard was standing in front of the entrance, and got to watch my entire laborious approach. By the time I reached the bottom, I was sweating profusely. He looked at me, frowning as though perplexed.
“It’s up the stairs that’s hard,” I said, the words belied by the sheen of moisture I could feel on my forehead. “Down is actually kind of fun.”
He nodded wordlessly, doubtless thinking he had better things to do than engage with hobbled lunatics, and I limped past him and out of the museum. I paused to do a visual sweep—all clear—and then cut left and got the hell out of there.
I’d been wrong about Murphy taking the day off. He’d merely been late. But hopefully that would be his only appearance. Because getting the sword had been the easy part. Successfully deploying it was apt to be a bit more challenging.
chapter nineteen
I took another taxi back to the Imperial, where I removed the brace and eased the sword from the scabbard. Even bereft of its combat tsukaito hilt, the grip was secure, the steel somehow both effortlessly light and lethally substantial in my hand.
I replaced the blade in the scabbard, carefully placed it under the mattress, hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, and headed out for another shopping expedition. It was a relief to be able to move normally again, and I realized I’d been suppressing a lot of fear that I might encounter Victor while I was half immobilized by the leg brace. I’d been armed with Oleg’s knife, of course, but still, now that the brace was gone, I realized just how badly it would have impeded me. I wondered again at what had impelled me to take so many risks to acquire this particular sword. Again, I couldn’t say for sure. But I certainly felt stronger, surer, now that I was armed with it.
I made two stops: first, a men’s store for another suit jacket and shirt—this time overlarge ones—and a pair of deerskin gloves. Then a used photography shop, where I equipped myself with a cheap SLR camera, and a folding tripod in a long nylon case.
Back in the room, I carefully wiped down Oleg’s knife and the hilt and scabbard of the sword, placing the sheathed sword in the tripod case when I was satisfied I had erased any possible fingerprints. Then I geared up in my modified armor—the Kevlar motocross bodysuit and vest. I slipped on the new shirt, secured Oleg’s knife to my forearm again, and then donned the jacket. I slicked back my hair, put on the glasses, and examined myself in the mirror. Staring back at me was a salaryman, thirty pounds overweight, in fashion-challenged eyeglasses and an ill-fitting afterthought of a suit. Good. I slipped the camera lanyard over my neck and hefted the tripod case. Now I looked like one of the scores of Tokyo’s amateur photographers, off work a little early and out to indulge his hobby. It wouldn’t fool Victor, if he saw me before I saw him, but it wouldn’t get a second glance from passing civilians the way, say, a man carrying two and a half feet of samurai sword in a shirasaya might. A long nylon case by itself might contain anything. Alongside a camera, the case must contain photography equipment. It was like a magician forcing a card, except that the card I wanted to force was all about perception.
I considered taking the train, but imagined Victor waiting somewhere outside Ueno Station. I knew I was getting excessively paranoid, but decided there was no harm in getting another cab. I had the driver drop me off at Kaneiji, a Buddhist temple behind the northwestern corner of the museum grounds and, with its famous pagoda, a suitable-enough spot for a man with a camera and tripod case.
I waited for the cab to depart, then pulled on the gloves and wandered out to the street. It was twilight now, the air autumn-cool. Early, considering that Victor had told me Sugihara wouldn’t arrive until eight o’clock. But about on schedule, I thought, if Victor were hoping to anticipate me.
There weren’t many pedestrians about, and when I saw an opening, I ducked behind the trees and stepped close to the fence. I paused to look and listen, but the museum grounds on the other side, similarly thick with trees, were still and silent.
I took the camera from around my neck and tossed it over the fence, then placed one end of the tripod case on the ground, and wedged the other end partway between two of the iron fence posts. And then, apologizing to the distant gods of Japanese swordsmithing, I planted a foot on the top of the case, gripped the metal bars, and pulled myself up.
With the case, bolstered by the wooden scabbard inside it, under me, half my body was already above the fence. Using exceptional care, I eased my stomach down onto the spikes, reached over with my right hand, and slowly rotated my legs over. The Kevlar prevented me from being skewered, but still, I could feel the pressure my body was exerting, and sensed what would happen if any of the spikes slipped past my armor.
But they didn’t. I got my legs to the inside of the fence, pushed up with my arms, and then kicked off, landing in an ukemi breakfall on the other side. I sprang instantly to my feet, facing the interior of the grounds, my right hand gripping the handle of Oleg’s knife. Nothing happened. No movement, no surprises. Wherever Victor might be, it wasn’t here.
I went back to the fence, reached through the bars, and worked the tripod case upward until it had cleared the spikes and I could take hold of it and bring it over. Then I picked up the camera, hurried over to a cluster of trees, and unzipped one end of the case. I reached inside and took hold of the hilt of the sword. To deploy it, I’d just drop the camera, grip the case with my free hand, and free the sword with my other. Out of weapons-check habit, I tested the draw, and then, satisfied with its smoothness and speed, moved out from the trees and toward the interior.
It was still light enough to see, but dark enough to obscure details. And just past six o’clock—about how early Victor might expect me to arrive. I felt his malevolent presence. But where?
Somewhere by the entrance to the main building, I reminded myself. It was his only choke point.
But he’s running the same play you are. Anticipating you anticipating him.
Right.
I moved west behind the main building, keeping to the trees and shadows, my eyes sweeping the area, my ears ale
rt for the telltale crunch of a leaf or snap of a twig. My heart rate was slightly elevated, but overall I felt calm and focused, the way I once had in the jungle. I saw no one. The museum was still open, I knew, but at this hour, visitors would have little reason to be strolling back here.
I circled wide of the building until I was even with the front west corner. Several gardeners were out, I was satisfied to see, sweeping and raking leaves in the gray light, the path lamps now offering more illumination than the remains of the fading day. None took any notice of me. None had any kind of a suspicious vibe. None was built like Victor.
I headed back the way I had come. My heart was kicking harder now. Reconnaissance was nearly done. If the enemy was here, I was about to encounter him. I gripped the sword hilt more tightly and slowed my pace, letting my night vision adjust from the lamplight by the front of the building, using the trees for concealment, careful to step only on dirt and moss, avoiding the scattered leaves.
I circled wide again, mirroring the approach I had used on the other side, moving carefully around until I was even with the east corner. In front of the museum, a few people were coming and going. Beyond them, I saw a few more gardeners. None looked at all out of the ordinary.
Where the hell is he?
I don’t think I heard the sound behind me as much as I felt it. Or intuited it. Because in a microsecond’s insight, I realized Victor hadn’t been watching the entrance. Not exactly. He’d known I would approach obliquely, that I would be looking for him in all the stealthy spots. So instead, he’d set up farther out—all the way by the visitors’ gate, an approach so obvious he knew I wouldn’t dare use it. And he’d spotted me reconnoitering from the west side, known I would repeat the maneuver from this deserted spot on the east side, had cut diagonally across to anticipate, come up behind me—
