A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set

by Stephen Hunter

  Oh, shit, thought Bob. I don’t like this at all.

  One of them seemed to amble by, then, with a certain nonchalance, slid across from Bob. Not a word was said, not for a while. Finally the young man looked over and smiled and said, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” said Bob. “Do I know you?”

  “No, but I know you. Thomas Lee, isn’t it?”

  “What is this?”

  The young man took a sip of his coffee.

  “This Starbucks, really good, huh?”

  “It’s okay. What is this? Who are you?”

  “A friend, I guess.”

  “I don’t have any friends. I’m a mean old bastard.”

  “Not that kind of friend. The other kind. As in, we have the same enemies, so we should be friends.”

  “Are you a cop? You look like a college tennis player.”

  “Relax, Mr. Lee. Enjoy your coffee. I just think that when you finish, you should come with us.”

  “Why would I want to do such a thing?”

  “Because, as I say, we’re friends.”

  “You say. I get in a car with you and the nine-millimeters come out and it’s all over for me.”

  “Guns are illegal in Japan. Let’s put it this way: we can help you. We have the same goal.”

  “Prove it.”

  “All right. Your name isn’t Lee. It’s Swagger. You’re an ex-marine, a war hero, known in some circles as quite capable, something of an operator. If you get caught here on that bad passport, you are in deep trouble. We know all that. If we wanted to take you down, we could do it with a single call. Yet we do not. We are nice to you. We like you. Look, let’s do it this way. I’ll leave, all the men here will leave. You come out when you’re ready. Satisfy yourself that no one’s around, no one’s coercing you, that it’s entirely up to you. Then cross the street and you’ll see a tan van. I’ll be sitting next to the driver. Come over, get in. We’ll drive you to an interesting place and you’ll meet some interesting friends.”

  He rode in utter silence for about an hour. Then the doors opened but didn’t reveal the bright light of outdoors. His “friend” leaned in.

  “This way, Mr. Swagger.”

  Then he heard a strange sound. It was a hollow, vibrating thunk or clank. It was a wood sound and he figured after a bit that people were banging sticks together, sometimes quite rapidly, in dizzying patterns.

  He was in a vast interior space under a vaulted, curving roof, and saw that it was a hangar of some sort. As his eyes adjusted, he quickly made out that it had been converted into a gigantic dojo. Everywhere, young men whacked at each other with katana, wooden of course, exhibiting a great deal of elegance and power. Most wore the hakama pants and shinshaga jacket of kendo, and the armor and masks of that game, but a few, either brave or fools, either too nimble to be held back by the armor padding or in punishment for an infraction, went at it with unprotected faces and bodies. They were really good.

  He turned and saw his “friend” had joined two men wearing uniforms that had to belong to Japan’s Self-Defense Force.

  “What is this, gym class?” he asked.

  “Not exactly, Mr. Swagger,” said the leader of the group.

  “Don’t know where you get your information. My name is Lee,” he said. “Thomas Lee. I have papers to prove it.”

  “That’s not what Lieutenant Yoshida said.”

  Oh, great, thought Bob.

  He walked over, joined the officer, and the four of them walked between mats until they reached a conference room. They all took seats around a large table.

  “Yoshida didn’t betray you,” the officer in charge said. “He was helping you. Yoshida informed us because he knew that you and I shared the same objective. I knew about your impending arrival before you even got the tickets.”

  “All right. Who are you?”

  “I, Major Albert Fujikawa, Commanding Officer, Third Battalion, First Airborne Brigade, Eastern Army, Japanese Self-Defense Forces, ground division, welcome you to Japan. The young man in civilian clothes is my executive officer, Captain Tanada, commanding officer of my Recon Company. As you might imagine, the bigger fellow is a sergeant, Master Sergeant Kanda. We welcome a retired gunnery sergeant, United States Marine Corps.”

  “Well, aren’t you well informed? You even know my old rank. Al Ino tells Yoshida, who tells you; you make inquiries and get all my bona fides.”

  “Something like that.”

  “But now I get it,” said Bob. “You’re Philip Yano’s guys.”

  “We were with Colonel Yano for many years. In Samawah, I was the one the colonel pulled from a burning Bradley vehicle. I’d be dead if it weren’t for him.”

  “He was a very fine man.”

  “He was indeed.”

  “He and the kids and his wife deserved better than they got,” said Bob.

  “Nobody deserved what the Yanos got. And that is why you’re here.”

  “No one seems to be doing a goddamned thing about it!” Bob said in frustration. “That don’t sit right with me.”

  “Mr. Swagger, your anger, your loyalty, your fury, your drive, all that is indeed commendable. However, it is time to face some realities. You have almost no knowledge of Japan. You don’t speak Japanese, you don’t understand our values, our traditions, the way our society is put together.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of samurai movies,” said Bob.

  “Oh, excellent,” said the major. “Did you see the one where the fellow outran the horse?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Or the one where the samurai defeated three hundred men in a village?”

  “Yeah, I saw that one too. I also saw the one where the gal cuts the guy’s head off, but he don’t notice until he turns around and his head stays in place. But I also saw a lot of stories about lone men doing what they had to do and getting the job done, even if it cost them their lives. That was the lesson I took.”

  “You know nothing of our politics, our corporations, our sexual tendencies, our strange relationship with the samurai past. Can you name a single city in Japan besides Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki?”

  “I think there’s one called Kyoto. Oh, also the one where they held the Winter Olympics that time.”

  “Do you know if you are allowed to have sexual relations with a geisha?”

  “I have always wondered about that one.”

  “Do you know how to tie an obi?”

  “No.”

  “What is the Diet? What is the name of the emperor? What is the name of the majority party? Do you know what a prefecture is? What is the difference between a shogun and an emperor? What is the family name of the great shogunate clan? Can you name a famous film director who did not make a single samurai movie? Do you know how many people we lost in World War Two? Do you know how many people were burned to death in a single night in Tokyo?”

  “No. I don’t know any of that.”

  “Do you know our justice system? Do you understand the structure of the yakuza, their traditions, identification marks, tendencies, and traditions? Do you understand the difference between our National Police and the Prefectural police and how they interrelate?”

  “No. I take the point. I am ill equipped for this job. I will get in the way. I will fuck things up. Is that what you brought me here to tell me?”

  “Actually…no. All those reasons are, in fact, why you are the one man in Japan who might succeed at this job.”

  Bob’s mouth fell open. Had he heard right?

  “I don’t—”

  “You see, we have a tight little island here. Rules, boundaries, traditions everywhere. Do you want to understand the Japanese, Mr. Swagger? Look at a kimono or a hakama and see how it is a galaxy of knots, all different, all perfect, all strategically placed. That is why the swords never fall out of the sashes in the movies. No westerner could tie any of those knots; every Japanese could tie all of them blindfolded. So we are caught up in our own knots, Mr. Swagger. We n
eed a westerner who can cut through knots. Fuck the kimono, fuck the obi, fuck the way saya fits in the obi, fuck all that shit. Cut through it. Find out who killed Philip Yano and why.”

  “So you want to…help me?”

  “By law, those of us in what passes for a military are forbidden from taking part in domestic affairs. The penalties are extreme; we are watched constantly. We represent a Japanese tradition that many Japanese have been taught to be ashamed of and cannot face. So they hammer us into insignificance. But you, Mr. Swagger, are uninformed, undisciplined, unaware. You can go anywhere and ask anything. You are true ronin. Masterless samurai, owing nothing to nobody. You really are Toshiro Mifune.”

  “Don’t know about that, but I will try my damndest.”

  “I believe you. All right then, you’ll have a number. We will staff that phone twenty-four hours a day. If you get in trouble, if you need help, if you need logistics support, intelligence, we will provide it for you. In the meantime, we’ll go our separate ways, seem to lose ourselves in the minutiae of meaningless existence as we have since Philip Yano and his clan were slain. I’ll even divorce my wife and move into a brothel. Well, no, I won’t.”

  “Believe it or not, I catch the meaning. Otowa mentioned that story.”

  “He would have, yes. Our retainer has been murdered, our clan destroyed. We will settle that account, Mr. Swagger.”

  “But there’s a bargain that must be made. I will be part of that fight. That’s the bargain I’m making with honorable men, right?”

  “All right, Mr. Swagger,” said Major Fujikawa, “you have your bargain.”

  “Now,” said Bob, “let’s see if you’re as good as you say you are.”

  “Go ahead,” said the major.

  “At Narita, there’s a cop who’s the station’s sword expert. Someone they call to deal with sword matters, importation, exportation, ignorant gaijin who bring stuff in or out without doing the necessary paperwork, that sort of thing.”

  “Yes. It is logical.”

  “He’s the guy. He’s what this thing pivots on. He’s dirty. He has to be. He understood in a second the potential value of the sword I carried, he made the phone call, he’s the one who made the whole thing happen. I have to have his name and address. I start with him.”

  21

  THE COP

  Someone in the unit had a brother who was a cop at Narita, and in a few days, Major Fujikawa called with a name—Kenji Kishida—and an address. Bob intercepted him at Narita. He was the one on the brand-new Kawasaki 400, a gleamy red dream machine, bigger than all the other bikes. Obviously, he’d bought it with his yakuza windfall for finding the sword.

  When he arrived at and departed from the station lot, parking and locking his bike in the gated compound, Bob watched from the coffee shop, where he could sit unobserved reading a newspaper. Kishida moved with an awkward limp. He didn’t have the agility, the rangy grace of a young man, nor was he muscle-bound like others who spent lots of time in the gym bulking up.

  This fellow wore a suit, suggesting he was a detective or an administrator, and in his bright red-and-black helmet with its darkened fullface shield he looked almost ridiculous, like a hybrid beast, part salaryman, part knight in armor.

  Bob monitored the man’s apartment house for a few days, until he was satisfied Kishida had no wife and kids at home.

  The next week Bob noted that his candidate was working the midnight shift. One morning at 4 a.m., Bob pulled into Kishida’s apartment building’s parking lot, riding an identical Kawasaki 400, Metallic Majestic Red, that he’d bought in the name of Thomas Lee. He’d spent afternoons coming to terms with the left-hand driving. He was swaddled head to foot in racing leathers, and wore the exact red-and-black helmet with darkened visor that Officer Kishida wore. He pulled into the stall that Kishida always took and even aped the candidate’s slight limp, his old guy’s demeanor.

  He entered the building, nodding at a sleepy night watchman at the desk who thought Bob was the officer, took the elevator up to the right floor, walked to the apartment, bent over, and attacked the lock with a credit card. There was no heavy security system, no deadbolts or electronic monitoring. The lock yielded in a split second. Then he was in.

  The apartment, of course, was trim and neat. Three pairs of black shoes and two pairs of sneakers with shoe trees in them were lined up in the foyer. Bob went to the bookcase and saw many English books; Kishida spoke English. The books were all about swords. Most were in Japanese, several in German, and several in French. All were arranged by nationality, then alphabetically. He pulled one out at random and found it copiously underlined and with margin notes. On the inside cover were precise notes taken in a fine kanji hand, running up and down the page, indexed to page numbers. He pulled two other books out and found them equally dissected.

  No dirty dishes were in the sink in the small kitchen, and the refrigerator yielded no germy sushi, no moldy noodles. There was a six-bottle carton of Sapporo, and three cans of that famous Japanese drink, Diet Coke. Next to the refrigerator was a half-open bottle of Ozeki sake.

  Bob moved to the bedroom. It was nondescript, with Musashi’s famous shrike hanging on a scroll over the futon, which was flat and neatly made up. Against the opposite wall was a large TV and DVD player. In the closet were uniforms, shirts and ties, and two civilian black ties and black suits. Then polo shirts, a few pairs of jeans and chinos, all neatly pressed. Each hanger was exactly one-third of an inch from the next.

  Closing the door, he went to the low stand next to the futon and opened it. There he found on one shelf, again alphabetically arranged, the crème de la crème of samurai DVDs, mostly Kurosawa but also several other top-line films he had seen, including Samurai Rebellion, Harakiri, Band of Assassins, and When the Last Sword Is Drawn. Beneath, neatly stacked and alphabetized, were porno DVDs, from a company called Shogunate AV. Shogunate AV seemed to specialize, as near as Bob could figure out, in something that might be called “teacher films,” for each of the covers showed an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties in a business suit and glasses lecturing a batch of boys. In subsequent shots she was stripping for them, they were touching her, she was servicing them, all in the classroom, where higher mathematics had been chalked on the blackboard.

  Jesus, he thought, who came up with that?

  He left the porn stash and went to the desk. Indeed, the still shiny owner’s manual to the top-of-the-line Kawasaki 22R400 bike lay on the desk, and it too had been scrupulously studied, underlined, and annotated, all in a precise kanji hand.

  Where were the swords? This guy would surely have swords.

  He never found them, but he found a vault in a living room closet. That’s where they’d be, this fellow’s small, proud collection.

  Bob went back to the desk and found a photo album: our hero in kendo outfit through the stages of his life, young and proud, a winner of some local tourneys, a man in his twenties lean and dangerous. A woman appeared in some of them, but then she disappeared. Divorce, death? In the more recent photos, the swordsman had become a coach and posed with a group of younger kendo warriors.

  Then, in a drawer, Bob found what appeared to be a pile of bills. They were all addressed to Kenji Kishida, of 1-23-43 Shintoyo, Apartment 633, Chiba. Many were in kanji, a few, from Citibank, were in English and Japanese, and many said the same thing: they appreciated his recent settling of debts and they thanked him very much.

  There it was. The guy was bankrupting himself buying swords he couldn’t afford. Then the dream sword is presented to him in the middle of a business day. He recognizes the Asano crest and the swordsmith’s signature, he reads the shape of the blade, puts two and two together, and recalls that somebody in the last few weeks wants an astonishing sword. He knows the number. He takes the sword apart. He makes his tang imprint, makes the call, faxes the imprint, and connects them to Bob. It takes a couple of hours to set up a tail. Bob’s sitting there like a fool; when he leaves, he has no idea he’s l
eading the killers to the Yanos.

  A week later Detective Kenji Kishida receives an envelope full of cash. He can settle his bills; maybe he buys a sword he’s longed for and it reposes right now in the vault. He’s got a little extra. He always wanted a bike. Why not? Who will notice? He probably never connected it with the Yanos. It was just a little favor of the sort a mildly dishonest cop might do for someone in power.

  The officer did not go to work Saturday. He arose late and finally went to his bike about eleven in the morning. He had full racing leathers on and looked like a ’cycle knight. He examined his bike with a great deal of pleasure, checking connections, lubricants, this or that tube or pipe or cable. Then he put on his helmet, climbed aboard, keyed the engine, kicked up the stand, backed out. With a lurch—he had clearly not yet mastered the subtleties of the handle-grip clutch and the foot shifter—he shunted into motion.

  Bob caught the tail end of this drama, as he’d been circling the blocks in a figure-eight pattern to keep the parking lot observed, figuring it would only be out of sight for seventy seconds out of every two minutes, and when he came by, the man had mounted up. Bob slowed, tracked him as he moved through the lot, let him join traffic, and followed a good three hundred yards behind.

  Kishida threaded his way through the traffic, still clumsy and jumpy on the gears, edged his way through the suburbs of the small city of Narita to the Kanto Expressway, where, ever so tentatively, he finally got up into the higher gears and was soon humming along at 100 kmh. It never occurred to him that he was being followed, and even if it did, he probably wouldn’t have had the confidence to take his eyes off the road before him. So Bob slipstreamed along without much difficulty.

  Then Kenji Kishida either tired of the strain of moving at high speed or decided he wanted to see something prettier than Nissans and Mazdas playing tag at 120 kmh and the revetments of the superhighway, so he took an exit ramp. Bob easily followed him. Soon enough the houses fell away. Ahead, some mountains dominated the landscape, and rows of carefully cultivated fields lay on either side. The traffic thinned, and finally Kishida turned up a smaller road and seemed to be heading into the mountains. He still had not noticed Bob, now two hundred yards behind.