“I definitely feel a debt to Japan, even though I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of racism too. It’s still an amazing culture, and most of the people aren’t like that. Where are you going with all this, anyway?”
Bozu shrugged. “I guess I’m just getting philosophical as I get older,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette.
Patrick laughed, and Bozu smiled at his own self-seriousness. He was all of twenty-six years old.
“One of these days when you’re feeling extra philosophical, I’ll take you to the temple where I do my meditation,” Patrick said. “You’ll find that a lot of the questions in life answer themselves when you just sit quietly. Plus, with that haircut of yours, you’ll fit right in. You might even be motivated to quit those things,” he said, pointing to the ashtray.
After Bozu went on his way, Patrick sat in the Toyota Stout in the parking lot and let his mind wander. When he was young, Patrick and his father often went surfing together in this same area of the Kamakura seaside known as Shonan, whose dark, volcanic sands extend about thirty miles along the shoreline. Daniel Featherstone, codirector with his wife of the Yukinoshita Orphanage in the heart of Kamakura, would drive the orphanage’s old-but-dependable Stout along National Route 134, with Patrick and a few of his friends rumbling along in the back, checking out the various beaches for the day’s best and steadiest swells. Irony of ironies, years later Patrick and Yumi had both worked in a North Korean shelter and were now looking to adopt a North Korean boy.
Patrick’s father would ferry the group from Yukinoshita Orphanage to the beaches in the Shonan area. Rarely do the waves there exceed a few feet in height, except during the late summer typhoon season, but Patrick had an indelible memory of catching his first four-footer at the age of eight on an exceptionally brilliant August morning the night after a raging thunderstorm had blown away the heat and humidity, with Mount Fuji, clear as a bell, witnessing his accomplishment from seventy miles away.
When he and Yumi returned from North Korea after the overthrow of the Kim regime, he decided to take up the sport again, hoping to recapture the ineffable sensation of freedom and oneness with the ocean he remembered fondly from his youth. The salt air, the gentle rocking of the waves, the indescribable walking-on-water experience when the board dropped into the pocket—all of these called to him from across the echoing years. He also wanted to reestablish a spiritual connection with his father, who had been lost at sea when his fishing boat went down in a gale off the Shonan coast when Patrick was fifteen. During his attempt to rescue Yumi from Senghori Prison near the DMZ a few years earlier, Patrick had two visions of Daniel Featherstone while in the throes of near-death experiences, but he had never mentioned these visions to Yumi or anyone else. His father, plain as day, had spoken to him, encouraging him to live for Yumi whose life depended on Patrick’s survival.
Before he was invited to be the chief security consultant for the Olympics, and while Yumi was doing most of the work of tending to Dae-ho, Patrick was at loose ends for a project of some kind, especially after the heady danger of their time in North Korea. So he decided to restore Yukinoshita Orphanage’s ancient Stout into a surf truck, rebuilding its engine and transmission, installing new seats, and painting it the brilliant canary yellow his father had painted it all those years ago so that the orphans could always spot it when they went out on their daytrips. As Patrick was tearing out the old seats, the dank, organic closeness of the rotting upholstery gave way to its old, evocative 1950s car smell and conjured obscure memories, the detail and sheer number of which took his breath away.
There was his best friend from age nine, Taiki Inamura, exaggerating the truck’s bounce by launching himself off his butt as high into the air as possible, making Patrick and the others erupt into the unchecked hysterics of youth. And there was little round-faced Masako Fujino, with her short rice-bowl haircut, timidly holding onto her twin sister, Yoko, who would assure her that everything was okay when the truck hit a dip in the pockmarked road. During every stage of the vehicle’s restoration, Patrick would sit on the ground from time to time, enveloped in the cloistral hush of deep reminiscence, gazing at the truck and allowing his senses to be flooded with the subtle ecstasy of nostalgia.
But some of the memories that percolated into his consciousness weren’t so pleasant. The reason Masako Fujino was so timid could be seen in the cigarette burn marks on her arms. Her sister Yoko, who also had scars on her body, actually fought back against her father and called the cops. None of the relatives wanted the responsibility of raising the girls, so they were sent by the court to Yukinoshita Orphanage. Other kids at the home were similarly abused, some sexually, and Patrick traced his fury bordering on madness toward child abusers to knowing these kids as a child and feeling a sense of guilt that he had been so lucky to have two parents who loved him.
Once work on the truck was finished, it was time to set aside painful memories and put the truck back to the use he remembered best: as a surf jalopy. Turning heads as he drove it along Route 134, the truck elicited two-handed waves, hoots of approval, and shaka signs. Patrick would head to a semisecret cove along the Shonan coast that his father had discovered years ago. Only he and a few select friends even knew that the cove existed, let alone that it was accessible if one didn’t mind hiking through dense sticker bushes. One day he turned off the main road, parked fifty yards from the narrow access trail, and began lugging the eight-footer he had bought used from a friend who owned the nearby Blue Peter Surf Club. As he crested the ridge, he saw no one in the breeze-wrinkled sea, no doubt a result of the sixty-five-degree water temperature, but he had changed into a wetsuit in the jalopy. After waxing the board and attaching a leash to a plug on its underside, he carried the board to the edge of the water, where four-footers were breaking with surging energy. It was a perfect day to reignite an old passion, and rising up from the Kanto Plain, Mount Fuji seemed to be acknowledging his return.
The bracing water turned his hands bluish white at first, but once he began paddling out beyond the impact zone, adrenaline and high spirits restored circulation to his exposed extremities. A long groundswell set was coming in from the southeast in a steady period, generated by a storm hundreds of miles away. Its outermost wave was the one he would claim from the sea. An offshore wind was keeping the waves tailored and well groomed, with hardly even a drop of spray blown off their crests. As his wave got closer with each rolling swell, exhilaration filled his belly, and when he finally launched his feet up onto the deck, an idiot grin plastered on his face, he felt for the first time in years the ecstasy of oneness with the ocean’s primal might.
Now, as he gazed upon the ocean months later from the upstairs veranda at Seedless, he wistfully recalled that wild sense of perfect self-sufficiency. He then thought of Yumi and Dae-ho at home and wondered once again if he was really cut out for the settled life. Sighing away this conflict that he kept hidden in a secret room of his heart, he finally broke off his reverie and started home. The evening air had gotten even denser with humidity, and tiny droplets of rain began to fall steadily, as if the sky itself were sweating. Capillaries of lightning pulsed inside huge nimbus clouds, and just as he was getting into his truck, the heavens opened up. When he reached his house on the top of the mountain, the rain was marching in sheets across the fields, and he ran inside the house stripping off his wet clothes and heading straight for the shower. He passed Dae-ho, who was sleeping again in his little tatami room. The double whammy of pellagra and beriberi from coming close to starving to death in the woods was still taking its toll on his fragile little body. After emerging from the shower and putting on dry clothes, Patrick lowered himself to the boy’s futon and kissed him on the forehead, but the boy didn’t stir from his dreams.
“Find what you were looking for?” he asked Yumi as he came out of Dae-ho’s room, toweling off his hair.
With a look of triumph on her face, Yumi took out an ancient-look
ing book she had been holding behind her back.
“Remember this?”
Patrick bent down to look at the title. She held in her hands an early edition of The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, the seventeenth-century artist/samurai. The same samurai whose quote was texted to Patrick by parties unknown after the double assassination at the Olympic stadium. One of Patrick’s main motivations for entering the JSOC years earlier was Miyamoto’s insistence on the interdependence of martial skill and artistic accomplishment.
“Of course I remember it. I wrote my senior thesis on that book. My mother gave me that copy for my graduation. I’m surprised you were able to find it. I was just talking about it today. How did you know about it?”
“I remembered seeing it in here somewhere. It’s a treasure. You should take better care of it.”
“I didn’t even know I had it anymore. Why did you go looking for it?”
“Miyamoto Musashi was one of the foremost samurai in history and a great artist to boot. I thought of him in connection with your new job. And didn’t your mother say that the Japanese side of your family was descended from him?”
Patrick shrugged. “Her maiden name was Miyamoto, but she was a staunch Catholic, and Musashi was a Buddhist. My mother didn’t have much use for the whole Buddhist thing, so if she said we’re related to Miyamoto, then I’m inclined to believe it, even if there’s no direct proof other than family hand-me-down history.”
“Maybe you can learn something from him for your Olympic job. Plus, if they interview you on TV, you can tell them about the connection.”
“I’m not looking to be interviewed on TV,” he said with a testiness he hadn’t intended. “I want to stay in the background.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Sorry. Those killings in the stadium today have me on edge.” He hesitated before bringing up the next bit of information and tried to sound casual when he did.
“By the way, I’m bringing in our old friends Tyler Kang and Inspector Choy to help with security.”
Yumi was silent for a moment. Then, “Those two are coming, and you’ll just stay in the background,” she said, suddenly darkening. “And no ‘rough stuff,’ I suppose.”
Both of the men Patrick mentioned had helped save their lives in Pyongyang, but Yumi quite rightly associated them with the opposite of the domestic tranquility she and Patrick were enjoying in their new life in Kamakura. Seeing her worried look, Patrick put the towel he was using to dry his hair around his neck and went over to her. He began massaging her shoulders. She sighed and said, “I just don’t want any more trouble, that’s all. I want us to be happy. Is that too much to ask?”
Patrick whispered in her ear, “Shhh. That’s what we both want.” The rain was coming down harder and his words were almost inaudible, but he could feel her begin to relax. After a few minutes, he turned her shoulders so that they were face-to-face. He guided her face to his with his fingertips. They kissed. She shuddered. Their breathing became faster and deeper as the rain came down harder. Patrick moved the low calligraphy table out of their way and lowered her to the tatami.
Suddenly, they both stopped and looked in the direction of Dae-ho’s room. Nothing. They looked at each other and stifled giggles like high schoolers. Then they picked up where they had left off.
The following morning broke clear and bright with an agate sky softly marbled with milkweed clouds. It would last at most an hour before the humidity drifted in from the ocean. They both dreaded this moment, because starting today, Patrick was contracted to be in Tokyo almost continuously for the next three weeks. After a mostly silent breakfast, they rose from the table and embraced.
“I have to go now.”
She nodded into his shoulder.
“You’ll be alright?” he asked.
“Go.”
“You okay?”
“Go.”
“I love you.”
“Me too.”
CHAPTER 9
July 18
Pung drove the six Bonghwajo he had chosen to a wooded area called Otaki in Chiba Prefecture, and after ensuring they were alone, they got out of the car and followed Pung deep into the forest. They carried their Type 58 rifles in long canvas baseball bat bags with Waseda University Baseball Club emblazoned on the sides. Two hours later, Pung was perplexed. While all six youths were highly skilled in the mechanics of riflery, they showed an appalling lack of discipline when it came to coordinating their efforts in even the simplest drills. Spoiled brats unused to working well with others, they seemed more interested in outdoing each other in target practice than being part of a team that would imminently be engaging the enemy in a dual attack. Pung called Mr. Lee to see if the mission could be pushed back, but Lee refused, saying they were already behind on their schedule of terror. Pung had them gather up their equipment for the ride back to Tokyo. But first he sent a text on another burner phone.
On the ride up to Tokyo Patrick felt his phone vibrate. Thinking it might be Yumi, he pulled off to the side of the highway. The text read, “The true warrior should dress like a commoner. Wearing a uniform is like painting a target on your back.” This was an obscure quote that Patrick discovered in the course of his thesis research on Miyamoto Musashi. It was confirmation that whoever was sending the texts was indeed taunting him. But like the text at the stadium, it was too general to be of preemptive value.
Unlike many of Japan’s temples and shrines which date back centuries, Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine was built relatively recently in 1869 to commemorate the nation’s war dead. After World War II, however, the shrine began accepting the remains of Class-A war criminals including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and several of Emperor Hirohito’s top generals. Moreover, the shrine’s museum exhibit descriptions and website began criticizing the United States for “convincing” the Empire of Japan to launch the attack on Pearl Harbor in order to justify its own war effort. Paying respects at the shrine is de rigeur for current members of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF).
The Self-Defense Forces were created in 1954 following the abolishment of the Imperial Army. While not a standing army per se, the SDF is charged with maintaining domestic order in times of crisis, although its role has expanded in recent years with China’s threatening moves against the Senkaku Islands off the coast of Okinawa. Just how much of a defense the SDF could mount to an outside threat is open to question and even ridicule, and the top brass of the organization bristle when their military effectiveness is called into question, particularly when a BBC report called the Force a “toothless tiger” with its chances of effectively countering a military threat as likely as Godzilla reemerging from the Sea of Japan.
After the double assassination at the stadium, though, Patrick had requested that the SDF be placed on standby at all Olympic venues, including the Nippon Budokan, an arena in which the judo competitions would be held the day after the Opening Ceremony. Judo teams from around the world were being allowed in to practice in the weeks leading up to the official opening of the Games. SDF reinforcements were sent in from various bases in the Tokyo area, and thus, when a group of three young men in brand new full battle rattle showed up at the North Gate of the Budokan and flashed expertly forged IDs of soldiers from Camp Asaka in northwest Tokyo, the civilian security guard waved them through unchallenged.
Once inside the main gate, the three quickly and silently ascended the steep staircase leading to the arena and proceeded to the SDF rallying point on the opposite side of the sprawling compound near the rear gate. They set their bags down on the ground, unzipped them, and took out three of the same Type 58 North Korean AK-47 knockoffs that Pung had used to such great effect in the stadium. But a sharp-eyed lieutenant, his suspicions aroused by the spotless and creased newness of their battle uniforms, had been discreetly following them from the main gate. When he saw that their rifles bore little resemblance to the
standard-issue Howa battle rifle, he drew his 9mm sidearm.
“Halt where you are,” he called out in Japanese, aiming the pistol at them. The three young men, who were unaware they had been followed, quickly turned their rifles on the lieutenant and fired. The lieutenant managed to get off four quick shots, one of which found its mark, before dropping to the ground with grievous wounds to his midsection, but the commotion had alerted soldiers in the improvised mess hall, and a dozen of them came charging out with weapons drawn. The three young Bonghwajo, one of them wounded in the shoulder, began firing in all directions, something they had been planning to do anyway but not with the kind of resistance they were encountering. The SDF men had just come off of a live-fire exercise at a camp near Mount Fuji, where their superior officers, in an effort at motivating them, read article after article effectively denigrating their manhood by lambasting the Force as “an army of clowns” as one reporter put it. Thus, their reflexes were honed, and their honor was on the line, and here was an opportunity to set the record straight. A volley of 9mm bullets from a dozen Minebea handguns cut down the three young men in a matter of seconds and continued long after they were ever going to get up again. But not before the young men had inflicted major casualties on the enemy.
Less than a quarter mile away and a few minutes later, the three other Bonghwajo mounted a near-simultaneous attack on Yasukuni Shrine, storming the small Chinreisha, or Spirit Pacifying Subshrine that honors Japanese war criminals, among others. But when reports came into the shrine of the attack a few minutes earlier on the Budokan, the SDF members of the Olympic judo team who were paying their respects at Yasukuni were on high alert as the young men charged through the main gate. All three Bonghwajo were killed with not a single Japanese casualty.
CHAPTER 10
When he first recruited his team of North Korean young men of privilege, Mr. Lee was concerned that they might not have grasped the fact that they were now in a very real sense soldiers in the fight to restore the Kim family to power and to reclaim their rightful place at the apex of North Korean society. But he could tell from the grim looks on the faces of the remaining members at the corpse hotel that they now fully realized the danger their mission entailed. All they had to do was look at the six empty chairs at the table.
Rings of Fire Page 6
