The Moving Blade

by Michael Pronko

  Chapter 47

  At the International Forum, Hiroshi took an earphone and read the printout of responsibilities. He found his name and where he’d been assigned. From his position just inside the wings of the stage, he could see about half of the audience, and all of the backstage area. Sakaguchi stood stoically on the other side. Hiroshi settled in for a long day of standing in place.

  Diplomats of every description and rank, from every country in Asia, Europe and North America filled the hall, leaning over the plush seats, exchanging name cards, catching up with colleagues, their murmur and buzz echoing off the walls. The press had set up cameras on both sides of the stage waiting for the opening speech, the one Bernard Mattson should have been giving.

  At least they were not outside, where police had erected barricades to separate protesters from opposite sides of the political spectrum. Earlier, when walking into the sprawling complex, he wondered why protesters, no matter how complex the issue, always divided neatly into two opposing groups, when there really should be dozens.

  Hiroshi saw Pamela from the U.S. Embassy walk out into the wings from backstage. She was helping organize the event. But when Hiroshi saw Setsuko step out and look out at the crowd, he was very surprised. Setsuko ducked back into the wings while Pamela patted a young woman on the back to send her out as emcee in the middle of the wide stage. A hush fell over the hall as the audience returned to their seats and the media clicked on bright video lights.

  Then, in the opposite wings, Hiroshi saw Setsuko talking quietly to Jamie, one arm around her. How had she recovered so quickly? The last time he saw her she was sprawled out on a gurney, going for an MRI.

  The emcee’s voice projected loudly: “We welcome you today to this conference on Asia. Bernard Mattson was going to give the keynote address here today, but I’m sure you have all heard the tragic news of his death.” The emcee stopped as murmuring filled the hall. “Sadly, we lost a true diplomat, one who understood all sides, knew the past from personal experience and envisioned a better future.” The crowd’s whispering brought the emcee to a halt. “Mattson’s work is not lost, though. A short biography is included in today’s program, along with a timeline history of this conference. Let me just recite a few of the high points.”

  Hiroshi listened for what seemed like a long time to the list of Mattson’s achievements and the conference’s history. A brighter, livelier tone echoed through the hall. The introduction came to an end amid a flurry of expectant whispers. The emcee waited patiently for quiet, and finally said, “Bernard Mattson lives on in his writings and in his ongoing influence on our decisions. And in one other way, too. We are honored today to have his daughter speak in his place. Please welcome Jamie Mattson.”

  Was she really going to speak? She said again and again she couldn’t stand being in front of people, but there she was, nodding as Setsuko whispered to her. Jamie walked unsteadily into the lights. The stage and media lights caught the indigo blue of her one-piece dress and shone off the white shawl over which her hair tumbled in a thick drape of shiny black. Watching her move to the center of the stage, Hiroshi felt again what he felt when he first set eyes on her—that she was ravishingly beautiful.

  By the time she got to the lectern, every person in the hall was on their feet applauding. Even with the lights and the distance, the blue of the bruises on her face were only half concealed by makeup. She didn’t smile or acknowledge the applause but studied the room. Her hands quavered, clamped around a printout of the speech. She blinked at the bright lights, as if they hurt. And then she spread out the pages on the lectern in front of her and tapped the microphone awkwardly.

  Jamie looked in Hiroshi’s direction at the edge of the stage but didn’t seem to see him. She looked the other way, and Hiroshi saw Setsuko nod reassuringly. Jamie faced the audience and took a big breath, steadying herself with her hands. The hall fell into respectful silence as she leaned forward to the microphone.

  “I am sorry that my father could not be here—” she paused to slow her breathing. And then continued. “I can not hope to do him justice, but this is what my father wanted to say. This is his speech. I changed only the pronouns. He wanted so much to be here today to tell you what he found, to express his disappointment not in humanity, but in the mistakes and misconceptions humanity falls prey to. He wanted to change the root and practice of politics. I hope you will listen until the end.”

  Jamie brushed back her long hair, touched the bruises on her face, and blinked again in the bright lights. Channeling her father’s will and spirit, she looked around the hall, and commenced to read.

  “My father believed the American system of worldwide military bases had become derailed. He wanted America and its allies to start decommissioning the bases, all six hundred of them in thirty-some countries, beginning with Japan. Under American pressure, every country in the world has been pushed to spend more and more on defense. Those expenditures drain the budgets of every country, destabilize economies and siphon money from unmet needs. The bases appear to be securing safety in the short run, but actually ensure conflict in the long run. Asian countries built defense systems and defense mentalities that provoke anxiety and encourage antagonism. It’s a state of mind that selfish political actors on all sides manipulate to their advantage. The lack of transparency covers up the corruption on which the system thrives. As one horrifying example, my father stumbled across evidence of the storage of radioactive debris from Fukushima on American military bases.” The crowd murmured but Jamie didn’t stop. “For him, that was the final straw. It confirmed his opposition to the renewal of SOFA. That was the reason he was killed. And I hope it will become the reason to change.”

  The audience listened, rapt by her—his—honesty.

  “He wanted to speak up not just to criticize, but to insist that the world can be cleaned up, can be made safe and secure, and can thrive in complex co-existence. He believed that Asian countries share a deep heritage and have more in common than politicians admit. He believed Asia could get along without America but could still get along with America as friend and ally. He believed that America should be a force for uniting countries, not for profiting military corporations.”

  Jamie paused, wiped her nose, and looked out at the audience in the huge hall. The audience members all rose to their feet, the initial patter of applause swelling to a roar of approval.

  Hearing a faint voice in the earphone, Hiroshi tried to tune in the signal. Saito was calling the detectives to the back entrance hallway. He heard his and Sakaguchi’s names called through the earphone, Saito ordering them to stay where they were in the wings of the stage.

  Hiroshi glanced out at the crowd, still on their feet, applauding. Jamie surveyed the crowd, confident now, pleased at the people responding to what her father wanted to say. Suddenly, she stopped and her smile faded. Jamie’s eyes fixed on one place in the hall, midway to the back doors. She squinted and blinked and stared. Hiroshi followed her sight line to the figure of a tall man rising from his seat and turning towards the exit.

  It was Trey Gladius. His tall body, blonde hair and overly assertive posture were unmistakable. He was heading up the aisle to the exit.

  Hiroshi skirted around the curtains and hurried down the stairs at the far side of the stage. Hiroshi sidestepped the people still applauding Jamie on stage, the aches and pains returning along with his fury, his mind racing through explanations for what he saw. Gladius must have returned on a different passport. Or through a military entry point. Or perhaps had never left at all. But how could that be?

  Hiroshi burst through the exit door into the huge open hallway. Light poured down from four floors of framed glass rising to the ceiling. Hiroshi could hear the chants of protestors outside. He looked in both directions, saw Gladius moving up the central three-story escalator. Hiroshi sprinted up the escalator past a row of people admiring the Forum’s architecture and looked back to see Sakaguchi climbing up after him.

  At the top o
f the escalator, the doors leading out into the street were just sliding shut. Hiroshi paused for the doors to slide back open and found himself outside between two factions of protestors held back by barricades and policemen. As Hiroshi pushed through, the line broke and the orderly crowd surged forward with a shout of victory. The police and barricades were overrun.

  The opposite group of right-wing protestors, corralled into a small lane opposite, broke loose and charged forward. The formerly rhythmic chants disintegrated into random yells and screams and then the painful sound of bodies pummeling each other. The opposite sides crashed together—as if magnetically pulled—right in front of the glass doors of the Forum. The police at the door pushed back, but there were too many people moving in too many different directions.

  Hiroshi turned sideways to struggle after Gladius who hurdled a barricade—toppling a policeman—and dove into the crowd. Hiroshi ran after him, examining each possible exit as he went, and caught a glimpse of Sakaguchi splitting the crowd with his huge arms.

  They both pushed through another jam-packed block of surging protestors until they could see far down the wide sidewalks of Ginza. Hiroshi ran a few steps in one direction, then in the other, before coming to rest by Sakaguchi, who had stopped at the last corner, sullenly scanning the meandering weekend shoppers.

  Gladius was nowhere to be seen.

  Nearer the forum, protestors obediently boarded police vans to be carted off for booking, herded along by riot police with keijo batons. As each van pulled off, more police trucks took their place, stopping all traffic and squeezing people away from the Forum. Atop one of the trucks, a police spokesman with a bullhorn ordered everyone to disperse. A few tussles continued, but police quickly surrounded each one to quash it.

  Along the usually neat, tame streets of Ginza were scattered broken blockades and crumpled protest signs, plastic bags and random trash, a few lost shoes, making it seem like a different city altogether.

  “Was that him?” Sakaguchi asked.

  Hiroshi caught his breath, looking back one more time.

  “You’re not sure?”

  “It looked like him.”

  “The local cops are going to be too busy to chase him. You want me to call it in?”

  Hiroshi shook his head at the hopelessness of it. “Maybe put something out to the airports. We might get lucky.”

  “That’s what it’s going to take. Luck. And patience.”

  Hiroshi kicked at the debris at his feet. “Is that all we’re doing from now on—chasing maybes?”

  “Maybes can lead to certainties,” Sakaguchi said. “Even when they don’t, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t chase them.”

  Chapter 48

  Jamie straightened up when Hiroshi slid onto the chair across from her in the dim light of the jazz kissaten coffee shop in Shinjuku. The bruises on her face had lightened into a coloring that no longer detracted but seemed to accent her vitality. Her silk shirt, a deep indigo blue, was pulled tight over her breasts. Their eyes met before they said a word, and they both looked away.

  “One of the few jazz coffee shops left in Tokyo,” Hiroshi said, asking the waiter for a cappuccino. “It’s been here since the 60s.”

  “I love the album covers on the walls. They still play records here?” Jamie looked around the brick-walled underground shop.

  “Vinyl never went out in Japan.” Late-fifties jazz played over the speakers, Miles Davis—sad, slow, spare, elegant.

  “I thought you were trying to avoid me,” she said.

  “It’s been days of spreadsheets, bank accounts, calls to London, New York, Singapore, Nairobi. I was so far behind.”

  “That’s my fault.” Jamie looked down at her coffee cup.

  “The speech was fantastic.”

  “I want to explain what happened,” Jamie said, frowning at her coffee cup.

  “I should have ordered several cappuccinos then.”

  Jamie smiled and looked into Hiroshi’s eyes. “I never thought Japanese had a sense of humor.”

  “Learned it in America. Self-defense.” Hiroshi leaned back as the waiter set his drink on the table.

  “That’s where I lost my sense of humor,” Jamie said. “I remembered laughing all the time when I was a kid.”

  “That’s because you were a kid.”

  “Thank you for sending the money and the scroll to me. And the will and other documents. Ueno brought them to the house. Why didn’t you deliver them yourself?”

  “I was busy,” Hiroshi said. “I had to—”

  “‘Busy’ is what people say when they don’t want to do something,” Jamie said as Hiroshi sipped his coffee. “I don’t know where to even start,” she continued. “What made it so scary was I knew the guys on the train were the same guys who tied me up at my father’s.”

  “The police report didn’t say where you were going after Fukuoka.”

  “New York.”

  “You took a train to Kansai to get to New York?”

  Jamie took a breath. “It sounds stupid. But I was scared. I found the scroll, a lot of money and his manuscript. On the scroll, my father told me that if he was dead, I should get out of Japan. I was going to take the manuscript to New York and get it published.”

  “The ticket was for Fukuoka.”

  “I planned to fly to Seoul or Hong Kong or wherever I could. Then I decided to get off in Osaka and leave from there. I thought that would be safer. But they knew where I was all the time.”

  “If you had told me—”

  Jamie held her hands up. “I know, I know, I should have. I apologized in all the messages I left on your phone. You didn’t listen to them?”

  “I listened to every one.” Many times. It had interrupted his work. He had pressed reply and canceled every time. He had been happy to sink back into work, without distraction, but thoughts of her kept rising in his mind, popping up on his mental desktop.

  “I was trying to be a good daughter. For once.”

  Hiroshi watched Jamie look around the kissaten. The room was smoky and the bar well-stocked. The two wait staff idly polished glassware.

  “But why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do?” Hiroshi finally asked, angrier than he meant to be. “I would have—”

  “I didn’t want to get you involved.”

  “I was already involved.” Hiroshi set his cup down and pushed it, half-finished, to the side. His anger was maybe something she deserved, but not something he wanted to let out. He needed to keep it in place, at least for a while longer. He pulled his coffee cup back towards him and took a sip. “You went to see your father’s lawyer. Did the will get settled?”

  Jamie sighed. “You don’t want to hear what I’m telling you.”

  Hiroshi looked at a Charles Mingus album cover on the wall. It was an abstract painting of two people made of colorful cubes and spheres, or maybe not two people at all, just strung-together shapes.

  “The will, then, OK. Setsuko took me. The will stated the house was mine, which Shibata already told me. There were multiple savings accounts. I tried to give something to Setsuko, but she refused everything except our relationship. I decided to stay in Tokyo. That’s about it, practicality-wise.”

  “What about New York?”

  “I quit my job. An easy email to write. I’ll get my stuff moved to storage. All I had were overpriced clothes anyway.” Jamie looked at him, her eyes asking forgiveness or at least understanding. Not seeing that, she continued. “The Endo brothers are helping me sell a few of my father’s prints and tea bowls. Ones I don’t want to keep. I’ll make more from that than from my old job in New York, which I hated anyway. I’m going to help Setsuko with her school. She’s been more like a real mother than my own.”

  “Did she help you with the speech?”

  “No, that was my father’s.”

  “Where did you find it? On the USBs, there was no file for his speech I could find.”

  Jamie squinted at him and drank her coffee. “It
was his speech.”

  “But where—”

  “Thank you for the home security system.”

  “You wrote it yourself, didn’t you?” Hiroshi started to smile, impressed. She had written it, he realized.

  Jamie shrugged off the question. “With all the locks, cameras, alarms, and devices, I could catch up on my sleep. But it takes me ten minutes to get into the house.”

  “Your house. Your bruises are better.”

  Jamie touched her face. “It doesn’t hurt to smile now.”

  Hiroshi looked at the thick layers of Jamie’s hair, freshly cut in a new style, and at her cheeks, glowing and radiant again. He took a sip of his cappuccino. He sighed, trying to think what to say, how to organize the file of what he wanted to tell her.

  Jamie bounced a little in her chair. “So…the English version of the book is coming out first, and then the Endo brothers are publishing it in Japanese through a new media company set up with Saori Ikeda’s funding. She’s a force of nature. It seems like the powerful Japanese women, few as they are, are really powerful.”

  “They have to be.” Hiroshi looked at Jamie. “Your father never knew who Trey was, though, did he?”

  “He was there, wasn’t he? At the speech?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “He’ll follow me forever.”

  “He’s not following you, he’s following orders.”

  “That’s worse. Some shadowy organization.”

  “But you understand who he is now, don’t you?”

  “He killed my father. Or had it done.”

  “We’ll get him even if it takes time,” Hiroshi said.

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  They both looked at the album covers and the framed photos of jazz greats along the walls. Hiroshi stayed quiet.

  “So…the Endo brothers are building a site to go with the release of the book. It’ll create ‘synergy,’ they keep saying. I was asked to give a couple more speeches. Your professor is helping with background. He’s something.”