There on the front walk stood Nagata, fastidiously cleaning the blood from the long blade of his katana. The snow all around him was bright red. One soldier lay headless to his left, another crouched in the bushes, gripping his wrist as his life spurted out of the stump where his hand had been.
"There were three of them out here," Hiroki said.
Nagata bowed. "I heard a shot and came to investigate. I met him on the side of the house. I left him there."
Hiroki marveled at this stout man of iron in his late sixties. He had vanquished three younger men, the total of whose years probably did not equal his, and appeared to give the deed little more importance than removing some unsightly weeds from the garden.
Nagata flourished and sheathed the katana in one smooth motion. "But why would soldiers attack the house of the baron?"
Hiroki spun and walked back to where the wounded officer lay. "That is what I'm going to find out right now!"
The young lieutenant was dazed and his words were barely intelligible through his broken teeth. Father walked in as Hiroki twisted his broken arm in an effort to get him to talk.
"Why this house? Why assassinate Baron Okumo? Why?"
"Captain Ando added his name to the list this morning. He is disloyal to the Imperial Throne. He seeks to make Japan subservient to the United States."
"How can you say such a thing?" Father said, his hands trembling as he reached for the front of the lieutenant's uniform jacket. "I have spent my life seeking to make Japan the mightiest nation on earth."
"Captain Ando said you were observed at the American Embassy last night with the traitor Count Saito." He raised his voice. "Tenchu! Death to all traitors to the Emperor!"
"I was bargaining for oil and scrap metal!" Father shouted.
"Don't waste your breath, Father," Matsuo said. "He is not worthy of it. You do not owe his type any explanation."
Hiroki motioned to Nagata to drag the lieutenant out as he had the three enlisted men. It was understood that there would be no trial.
He tried to control the trembling within. Part, he knew, was a reaction to the battle, but mostly it arose from fear. If he and Matsuo and Nagata had not been here, if Matsuo had not acted so quickly...
Father would be dead and it would be entirely his fault.
Not supposed to happen this way…not in the plan. Only the foot-dragging, tunnel-visioned politicians were to be eliminated. Not his own father.
He repressed another tremor. Had he started something he could not control?
Father walked slowly into the back room, obviously shaken.
"Father…?" Hiroki said.
"I wish to be alone for a while. To think."
Feeling rejected but understanding the turmoil his father must be experiencing, Hiroki stood with Matsuo in the front room for a moment, surveying the carnage. Matsuo spoke first.
"We fight well together, my brother," he said, bowing.
Hiroki returned the bow. "Yes. We defended our home well. But it was you who saved Father's life."
"Only from the first shot. We saved him together."
Hiroki bowed again. He felt very close to Matsuo at this moment. Today's battle had forged a bond, one he hoped would never dissolve. Perhaps it never would. But he knew deep in his heart that the course he was setting for his life and his country might test that bond to the limit.
He had gone too far now to turn back, even if he wanted to.
MARCH
Matsuo stared at the front page of the morning edition of Yomiuri. The Ni-ni-roku liken, as the February 26 Mutiny was now being called, was over. The rebellious troops had been arrested and carted off, the tablecloths they had flown as flags from the buildings they had occupied had been taken down, and all seemed quiet in Tokyo. But the entire Japanese government was reeling from the loss of so many of its elder statesmen.
Matsuo's thoughts were wrenched back to the present by the photograph in the lower right-hand corner of the newspaper's front page. Two young Army officers were pictured, identified as Captains Nonaka and Ando, the two who signed the manifesto issued by the mutineers on the day of the rebellion. According to the lieutenant who had tried to slay Father, Ando had been the one who had ordered the killing. And the other one, Nonaka... Matsuo had seen him before. Yes, in Hibiya Park, talking to Toyama the day before the rebellion.
"There will be no public trial," Father was saving as he entered the room. He seemed to have recovered from the shock and was back in command.
Hiroki, Toyama, and other members of the Tosei-ha followed him in. General Terauchi and Admiral Nagano were present as well. An almost constant round of meetings at various houses and back rooms had followed the rebellion.
"What we need now is a plan of action," Toyama said. "What do we do now? Can this tragedy—"
Tragedy? Matsuo thought. You were behind it.
"—be turned to the advantage of the Tosei-ha? I realize that may sound callous, but perhaps this is a heaven-sent opportunity." He looked around the room. "Any ideas?"
Suddenly tense, Matsuo focused his attention on the group. He suddenly realized that the future of Japan might well be decided here in this room by this group of men. Hopefully, they would realize the volatility of the Army and act to curb its power.
Hiroki spoke up. "What we see before us are two gaping voids. I propose that the Kodo elements that have been ripped from the Army be replaced by officers with a broader view of what Japan can accomplish, officers who can see beyond Russia, China, and Manchuria, who are sympathetic to the Tosei-ha."
As nods of agreement came from all the cushions, Matsuo realized with a jolt that this had been planned. He was sure Hiroki had cooked up and rehearsed this speech for days, perhaps weeks, yet he was delivering it as if he were making it up as he went along. Matsuo listened with growing horror.
"And as for the government, seven elder statesmen—some called them moderates but I thought of them as dragging anchors—have been assassinated, creating a void in the government. My father has told me that the Emperor has called in Prince Sanjoni to choose a new prime minister. I think we should bend all our efforts toward seeing that men who think like us fill that void, and that a member of Tosei-ha becomes the new prime minister. I believe our esteemed friend and patriot Koki Hirota would make an excellent choice."
Matsuo lifted the newspaper to hide the relief that must have been obvious on his face. A member of the Black Dragon Society as prime minister? They were known the world over as gangsters. It was ludicrous. The Emperor would never approve such a choice.
* * *
By the end of the week Matsuo heard with astonishment that Hirota had been summoned to the Palace by Prince Sanjoni where he accepted the Emperor's mandate to form a new government. And only two weeks later he learned that General Terauchi had been appointed Minister of War and Admiral Nagano was Minister of Marine.
The Tosei-ha—the Control Faction—had begun to live up to its name.
But Matsuo recalled Hiroki's offhand remark years ago about how the Black Dragon Society answered to the Kakureta Kao. He wondered who ultimately might be controlling the Tosei-ha. With a chill he remembered green eyes peering at him through a silk mask and thought he had his answer.
1937
THE YEAR OF THE OX
MARCH
You cannot die, sensei.
Matsuo knelt beside the futon where Nagata lay, breathing heavily. The old samurai was bathed in perspiration and his skin was deathly pale. Matsuo could hear fluid bubbling in his lungs as he breathed. He had been like this since Matsuo's arrival—restless, feverish, unresponsive even when one shouted his name.
Cho had brought him the news and he had rushed here immediately from the Naval Building. Upon his arrival, Kimura had told him that it had begun with chest pain last night. The doctor had come and diagnosed a severe heart attack. Nagata had refused to go to a hospital and had made her swear not to take him if he could no longer decide for himself. He had been like this since
dawn.
My sensei is dying.
Aboard the train on his way here, Matsuo had been unable to grasp that simple fact. He had somehow assumed that Nagata was indestructible and would always be there—somewhere—for him to go to when he needed advice, or just someone to talk to. But now that Matsuo was here, now that he saw his old master, he knew. Death hovered in the air, waiting…waiting for Nagata.
Grief tore at him, making him want to cry out his pain. He held it back, for he knew Nagata would want him to be strong for Kimura. Most of all, he felt terror. Terror at the prospect of facing life without Nagata somewhere behind him, guarding the back. And anguish that the most important man in his life was going to slip away without ever hearing Matsuo tell him what he had meant to him.
"Nagata-sensei," he said softly, gripping the leathery skin of his teacher's hand when Kimura had left the room for a few minutes. "This is Matsuo speaking. I know you cannot hear me, but I must say this to you. I am the son of Baron Okumo, but you will always be my father. You raised me, you taught me, you gave me a part of yourself I always have with me. I will keep that part of you safe. I will never sully it by forgetting what you taught me. All that I am and all that I will be, whatever good I do in this world, is because of the part of you that has become mine. As long as I live, so will you."
Matsuo gasped as Nagata's eyes opened slowly and fixed on him.
"Don't ever say that," he whispered between gurgling breaths. "Baron is your father... owe your life to him... talking like an American now."
Matsuo silently bowed his head, but in his mind he said, Then so be it. You are the true father of this man.
Kimura came in and rushed to her husband's side when she saw that his eyes were open. Matsuo backed away to let them be alone. After a while, Kimura beckoned him closer.
"He has a request." Her lips trembled but her eyes were dry. She was proving a worthy samurai wife.
"My daisho..." Nagata said in a barely audible voice. "...bequeath it to your care."
Matsuo looked over to where the two Masamune blades in their pearl inlaid scabbards rested one above the other on the black lacquered katana-kake. The honor of such a gift left Matsuo weak all over.
"I cannot—“
"You must!" The old samurai suddenly seemed to have found a pocket of strength. His voice grew stronger. "The katana … called the Gaijin Masamune … has magic in it. The destiny of the Empire and beyond is coiled within it. It fought the masked monks hundreds of years ago... would have triumphed had not the Black Winds carried the day for the monks. I fear the time will soon come when it will be called upon to drink the blood of the Kakureta Kao again."
That was Hiroki's order. Did he mean—?
"I don't understand, Nagata-san."
"The monks wanted you. Still want you, I think. Came to your father and asked to take you into their temple. You were not yet born—not yet conceived. Pressed too hard. Baron was alarmed. Had me bring you to America to keep you from them. Take the daisho and keep it near. It will serve you well."
"I am not worthy."
Nagata managed a smile as the force drained from his voice. "Way you defended home during Ni-ni-roku Jiken... proud to have been your sensei... no one more worthy."
And then he closed his eyes and soon his breathing stopped. But a trace of the smile remained on his face.
* * *
Matsuo lay on his futon that night and turned Nagata's last words over and over in his mind.
Came to your father and asked to take you into their temple. You were not yet born—not yet conceived.
How could they have known? And what could they have wanted with him? A chilling thought.
And what of Father? Had he sent him to the United States to learn American ways, or to hide him from the monks? Which was the truth? Or were both partially true? Was that why he had been forbidden to draw attention to himself in America? Why he had never been allowed to return to Japan even for a visit until he was well into his teens?
Matsuo lifted the two swords of the daisho from the floor beside his futon and cradled them in his arms as he had as a frightened child. He wondered about the nightmares that had plagued him back then. Could those figures crawling toward him have been monks of the Kakureta Kao?
He shivered with the memory of his terror. The dream had never recurred in the decade or so since his return to Japan. He was glad to be rid of them.
With the swords resting comfortably against him, he drifted off to sleep...
...and found himself standing in an open field full of armed men under a flawless spring sky. Miles away, on a rise at the far end of a rocky peninsula, sat a huge, squat, three-tiered pagoda. He gazed through the eyeholes of his steel helmet at the hundreds of armored samurai flanking him on either side. All seemed to be waiting for something. What?
And then some were pointing toward the temple. Four horsemen were approaching, bearing a litter between them. It took a long while for them to arrive. When they were close enough to make out their features, Matsuo saw they had none. Each wore a silk mask over his face. They stopped amid the assembled samurai, gently lowered the litter to the ground, then turned and rode back toward the temple.
Matsuo watched them for a moment, then turned his attention to what they had delivered. It appeared to be a basket made of black wicker, no bigger than a small coffin. One of the shogun's officers approached the basket and gingerly lifted the lid. He peered in, then removed his helmet and reached into the basket. He appeared to jostle something within. When he glanced up again, his expression was one of concerned bewilderment. He motioned others closer for a look.
Matsuo stepped forward, curious to see what the Kakureta Kao guards had delivered. But as he neared the basket, he noticed a slight dimming of the light. He looked up and saw a tiny spot of black hovering in the sky, growing bigger by the moment. And the bigger it became, the more rapidly it spread, oozing across the sky like the blackest oil poured on the surface of clear water. It swallowed the sun, casting the whole plain into darkness. A wind began to blow, rising to a cold, dank, sour gale that tore at Matsuo's armor. The horses reared and whinnied, some bolted. Otherwise courageous men bolted too, running in all directions in wild panic.
Matsuo held his ground in the fading light, fighting the fear and the overwhelming sense of hopelessness that seeped through his pores. Whatever was happening, it sprang from something in that black basket, that wicker coffin. If he could get to it, maybe he could stop this madness.
But the wind blew harder, knocking him off his feet. As he crawled toward the basket, desperate to reach it before the light failed completely and he would be unable to find it, he noticed that the grass all around him stood utterly still. He was fighting a wind of hurricane proportions that did not flutter a single blade of grass. But something else was happening to the grass. It was dying, withering, turning brown as he watched.
The wind howled in his ears and tore through his soul as utter blackness engulfed the plain.
No hope.
He could not see his hand before his face. He pulled the short wakizashi from its scabbard and forced himself to a kneeling position.
No use…he positioned the point over his abdomen…no use at all. He—
—woke up sweating and trembling. A new dream. Worse than the other. The despair, the hopelessness. He looked down and saw the moonlight through the window gleam from the bare blade of the wakizashi in his hand. Slowly, carefully, he slid it back into his scabbard.
The Black Wind. The Wind-That-Bends-Not-The-Trees. I've seen it. It really happened.
He calmed himself and caressed the daisho. These blades had been there. They had been passed down through the centuries to Nagata, and now to him. Why? What did it mean? Why him?
So many questions, but none more insistent than the one that would plague him all his days until he knew the answer: What had been in that black wicker basket?
JULY
SAGAMI BAY
"Do you think
Hiroki has forgotten about me?"
Matsuo stared at Meiko as she sat on the planking next to the centerboard housing. She wore a short, pink kimono that exposed her legs to the knees; she had tied a matching scarf around her head to hold her hair down in the breeze. But the single triangular sail found little movement in the air, barely enough to fill it ease the dinghy across the still waters of the bay. He leaned back against the transom, his right hand on the rudder handle, instinctively guiding the boat on a broad reach off the easterly breeze coming over the port side.
"You're very beautiful."
Meiko smiled and bowed her head. "That's not what I asked you."
"Yes. I think he's forgotten about you. For now. Sooner or later, though, he will remember."
Meiko's smile disappeared and she looked away toward the land. Matsuo knew her thoughts. Her father had made a near-complete recovery. Count Mazaki's words were slightly slurred and he still needed a cane when he walked, but on the whole he could hold his own with the other members of the Tosei-ha. Meiko had no further means of delaying the marriage when Hiroki next demanded a wedding date.
I pray that day will never come, he thought.
The frantic schedule of meetings and rallies Hiroki had maintained in the year and a half since the mutiny had kept him too preoccupied and too busy to make time for a wedding.
He voiced what he hoped was a cheering thought. "Then again, it might be a very long time before the thought of marriage finds room in his mind."
Meiko trailed her hand in the water and said nothing.
Yes, it might very well be a long time before the storm of activity that swirled around his father and brother abated. So much had happened. So much was still happening. Koki Hirota's government had lasted barely a year. Prince Konoye was now prime minister but he was unable to rein in the militarists. Even now, in China, Japanese troops were skirmishing with Chiang Kai-shek's garrisons in Wanping and at the Marco Polo Bridge outside Peking.