But just to be sure, Hiroki would contact the Minister of Information and see to it that Matsuo was smeared in all the Tokyo newspapers. He would be labeled a murderer, a traitor, a madman. No one in all Japan would even listen to him, let alone allow him within sight of the Emperor.
* * *
Matsuo raced toward the main gate to the palace grounds. As he pulled up to the bridge that led across the moat, he saw the Imperial Guard forming a cordon across the ramp, their rifles all pointed his way. He slowed to a stop and stepped out of the car.
"I must see the Emperor!"
"The Emperor is seeing no one today," said the Captain of the Guard.
"It's important!" Matsuo said. "A matter of life and death for all Japan! You must let me see him!"
"You must go through the proper channels."
"Please!"
"Leave now or we will arrest you," said the captain.
Matsuo was suddenly furious. There didn't seem to be anything he could do. Hiroki and his ruling clique had locked the Emperor away from the entire world. He heard only what they wanted Him to hear, saw only what they wanted Him to see. Matsuo pounded a fist on the car top, denting it. He had to get in there.
Without thinking, he slipped back behind the wheel, threw the car into first gear, and gunned it toward the Imperial Guard. If he could just get past them, just get onto the palace grounds, he could find a place to take shelter and hold them off until the Emperor heard of his plea for an audience. He wouldn't care if he was executed immediately afterward, as long as he could have the Emperor's ear for three minutes.
The Imperial Guard opened fire immediately. Windshield glass shattered around him, cutting his face and hands. He kept his head low and shifted into second as he rammed past them. Suddenly another two dozen of the Guard appeared at the far end of the moat. They, too, opened fire, riddling the car with bullets.
Too many!
He would never make it across the moat alive.
Matsuo slewed the car around in a screeching turn. The right fender caught the stone guardrail as he came around. It ripped off with a tortured shriek and then he was jamming the accelerator to the floor and tearing away from the palace. A few shots sang past the car as he fled down the road past Hibiya Park and the ruined Imperial Hotel.
He was bleeding from numerous facial cuts, and one of the bullets had creased his shoulder. He could not stay in Tokyo. The only place he could go now was Hiroshima.
TINIAN
Meiko watched Frank across the table from her. He was smoking in silence, leaning back in the chair with his feet up on the table, blowing smoke rings. Since Matsuo had left he had brought her here twice a day to be "interrogated.” He had asked her a few questions the first day, but none since.
She had explained how Matsuo had shown up on Oahu the week before the attack, how she had truly thought him dead until that moment. She didn't know if Frank believed her or not.
He talked a lot. Often he talked about the war, how it had affected Americans, and asked her how it had affected Japan and how the Japanese people felt about it. He talked on and on about Pearl Harbor, almost as if he were talking to himself about how ill-prepared the Pacific Fleet was. "Sitting ducks"—he used the phrase over and over. Meiko was beginning to get the feeling he blamed his own country as much as Japan for the attack. She didn't understand that.
When he wasn't talking about the war, he would just sit there on the other side of the table and smoke. And in the silence, Meiko's thoughts invariably turned to Naka: Was he all right? Had those masked monsters hurt him?
Thinking of Naka with Frank present brought her to the inevitable.
Meiko sensed that despite her unforgivable betrayal, Frank still harbored some feeling for her. It was deeply buried and she had no desire to resurrect it, but there was something he had a right to know.
"I have a son," she told him.
"That's nice.”
"He will be three years old next week."
"Good. I'm glad for him." He took a deep puff from his cigarette. Meiko waited for the progression of smoke rings but none came. He suddenly lowered his feet to the floor and began to cough. "Next week?"
Meiko nodded, smiling.
"You bitch!" he said, his face livid. "You mean you were doing double duty in the rack between me and Matsuo? Why you—"
"He has a birthmark," Meiko said quickly before he could go too far.
Frank stopped. "Birthmark?"
Meiko nodded. She drew her fingers from above her left eye up to her hairline. "It's red."
Frank's face went slack. His trembling fingers leapt to his own birthmark. "Like… like this?"
"Almost exactly."
As Frank stared at her, tears began to form in his eyes. "Oh, God, Meiko, tell me you're lying. For once in your life, admit you're lying."
Meiko felt her own eyes brim over. She realized now that she loved two men, and had hurt one of them terribly. This one.
"I've never lied to you, Frank. Never."
Like a man in a trance, Frank straightened from his seat and stumbled around the table. He held his arms out to her. She hesitated a moment, then rose to embrace him.
* * *
A son! My God, I was a father. I had a son. And I was holding Meiko in my arms again. It was almost like we'd never been apart.
"I didn't know whether or not to tell you," she said. "I didn't know if it would bring you joy or more pain." She leaned back and looked at me. "I've caused you enough pain."
I let her go. "That you have. But this..."
"His name is Nakanaori."
I knew the word: reconciliation. Nakanaori. It didn't make up for everything, but it did go a long way toward healing wounds I'd thought would fester forever. A son…
"We call him Naka."
We? A sudden thought chilled me. "What did Matsuo say? How did he—?"
"He hated all of us at first—you, me, Naka—and refused to give the baby his name."
A burst of vindictive laughter welled up in me. Matsuo thought he had won it all, but Meiko gave birth to my son.
"But by the time Naka was one," Meiko was saying, "he came to love him like a son and has raised him as his own. Naka calls him Father. He has been very good to your son, Frank."
The laughter withered away inside. Would I have done that for his son? Could I have done that?
"Naka and I would have died in the March firebombing of Tokyo if not for Matsuo."
I shuddered. LeMay's bombers had almost killed my boy.
"But where is he now?"
"In… in Hiroshima. Matsuo is stopping in to see him before he returns." She struck me as oddly hesitant and vague. Then she brightened. "Perhaps he'll bring Naka back with him."
"Oh, I don't know about that. Meeting a sub at night is risky. I'd hate to think of him taking a chance like that."
But if he did. Oh, God, if he did. To think: my own son. Three years old and I'd be meeting him for the first time. It made my knees go soft. I hadn't been particularly anxious for Matsuo's return. Now I couldn't wait.
Then she told me how the child had got to Hiroshima, and why, and the joy in me damn near died.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 2
HIROSHIMA
Matsuo had watched the building in the Kannonmachi section throughout the late afternoon and into the evening. It was now after midnight and he hesitated on his next move.
Was this the right address? Could Naka really be here in this old factory? He had seen a few men come and go. They had not looked like factory workers, yet he’d noticed nothing remarkable about them either. A delivery of vegetables, but little other activity. Near sunset he had seen two little boys looking out at the city from a second-story window. His field glasses showed that neither was Naka, but now at least he knew there were children inside.
He had to go in there. If Naka was being held prisoner, he had to find him and bring him back to Tinian.
Everything else was set. He had used his officer's uniform
and Naval Intelligence standing to requisition a launch from the garrison at Hiroshima Castle. If there was a search out for him, word apparently had not yet reached Hiroshima. He got the launch. Then he had set about finding his way by water to the building in question. It didn't take long. Hiroshima was a collection of five fingerlike islands divided by the estuarial branches of the Ota River. Nothing in the city was very far from the water.
He saw a lot of Hiroshima along the way. He liked it. Its black tile roofs and profusion of gardens gave it a provincial look. Although unscarred by the incendiary raids that had leveled so many other cities—was this another of the cities the Americans were "saving" for their atomic bombs?—it was haggard and careworn from the war. But people still bustled along with an air of industry and purpose. And all about the women and older children took time out from school and their daily work to drill with bamboo spears against the day when the Americans charged ashore. He turned his mind from the absurdity of it.
Eventually he was able to tie up the launch within a quarter mile of the old factory.
All he had to do now was find Naka.
By the time his watch had edged onto 1:00 A.M., he knew what he would do. He had been watching the windows. Even at this hour, it was hot and unbearably humid out here on the street. It had to be worse inside. All the windows on the second floor were open. They were of no use to him. But on the ground floor, a few remained open.
With a flashlight from the launch in his back pocket, Matsuo crept toward the building and hoisted himself atop a stack of wooden crates along the west wall. A quick glance through the window showed a dimly lit interior. A cluttered expanse of concrete floor lay directly below him. He slipped through, lowered himself to the floor, found a dark corner, and waited.
* * *
Shimazu was suddenly wide awake.
Someone is here. An outsider!
He rose from his futon and fitted his silk mask into the skin folds that secured it to his face. He then went to his chest where he kept his case of doku-ippen. He withdrew a glistening two-inch sliver and held it carefully as he folded his hands inside the sleeves of his kimono. He walked through the dark toward the steps that led down to the first level. He would not raise the alarm that would bring everyone rushing from their futons. No, let them all stay asleep up here. He had a feeling about who this intruder was, and he wished to confront him.
* * *
Matsuo heard footsteps. Had he made too much noise? No, these were slow and measured, like a sentry's. He saw the single figure walk by. The guard's features were indistinct. Matsuo squinted into the dim light and gasped. There were no features. The face was covered with a silk mask.
Kakureta Kao.
The guard must have heard his sharp intake of breath for he turned and approached Matsuo's hiding place.
"Who's there?"
Matsuo waited until he was under the open window, looking up at it, then sprang. He rammed both hands against the back of the guard's head, driving it against the stone wall. A dull thud, a sigh, and then the guard went limp. Matsuo lowered the limp form to the floor and stood over him.
What was the Kakureta Kao doing hidden away here in an old Hiroshima tin factory?
Suddenly the pieces were beginning to fit. Naka's disappearance… Hiroki… the children disappearing in Tokyo… a picture was forming, but of what he could not say just yet.
He began to scout the first floor. In a cubicle that once must have been the factory office, he found crates of written records. All varieties—from ancient scrolls and rolled manuscripts to ledger books. One of the ledgers was open on the desk. He played the flashlight over the pages as he flipped through it. It seemed to be medical in nature, describing surgical procedures. Then he came to a list of patient data and stopped. Names were followed by sex and age, all below five years. His pulse quickened. He looked ahead again and read the surgical descriptions more closely.
Slowly, he went cold. He read on, skipping from page to page, turning them faster and faster. The latest anesthesia had been employed and aseptic techniques had been rigidly followed to avoid postoperative infection, but each case described the same ghastly procedures—the systematic, step-by-step mutilation of a small child.
"Enlightening, is it not, Okumo-san?"
Matsuo nearly cried out at the sound of the voice behind him. He whirled and shone the flashlight into the speaker's face. Shimazu's unmistakable green eyes did not even blink.
* * *
He was here. He had come on his own, sneaking in like a thief. How wonderful. After hearing Hiroki's report of the debacle in Tokyo, he had despaired of ever getting close enough to Matsuo Okumo. Yet here he was. Truly the All-Knowing Face was smiling tonight.
Shimazu could have tried to poke the little doku-ippen into the skin of the younger Okumo's neck as he stood leaning over the desk, but had decided against it. Matsuo might have sensed his presence at the last instant and put up a struggle, and in that struggle the poison sliver might have punctured the wrong skin. Besides, he wished to savor the moment. He had held off killing Matsuo for nearly twenty years. Better to let the man become used to his presence, let him assume he was in no immediate danger, and then use the doku-ippen in an unguarded moment.
The younger Okumo recovered quickly from his shock. He picked up a ledger from the desk.
"What are these atrocities?"
"Surely you've heard of the Kuroikaze, Okumo-san. And surely you've approved of their use against the Americans. True, they haven't been as effective as we might have wished, but they have caused considerable damage and much consternation among the enemy, and will prove even more valuable in the near future. But there's a price to pay for such a weapon, and you've just seen it."
"Children?" Matsuo said, his face twisted in revulsion. "You mutilate children for the Black Winds?"
Shimazu kept his tone as matter-of-fact as possible. He enjoyed shocking this young pup.
"I knew your sentimental reaction would be typical of what we might expect from the rest of the populace, so the nature of the Black Wind shoten was hidden from them. Really, what has age to do with it? Since when is someone too young to sacrifice for the Emperor?"
"Where is Naka?"
"Who, may I ask, is Naka?" Shimazu said, knowing perfectly well who he meant.
"My son."
"Really? I was given to believe you had no son." He raised a finger as if inspiration had struck. "Unless you mean that miserable little zasshu you kept around your house. Yes, he's here. Hiroki obtained him for us."
"My own brother?"
"And why not? Mongrels make the best shoten, and this child carries none of Hiroki's blood, nor any of yours."
"Has he been mutilated like these?" he said, holding up the ledger with his left hand while his right crept toward the grip of the katana in his belt.
Shimazu saw the murderous expression on the younger Okumo's face and realized with a start that he was looking his own death in the eye, that he might have only a few heartbeats left if he did not give the right answer quickly.
"No, no! That is no longer necessary."
"Take me to him."
"Of course. He is upstairs." He turned his back on Matsuo and led him out of the old office. As they crossed the factory floor, an idea occurred to him while passing the door to the shoten room. "Would you like to see the shoten?"
"The children?" Matsuo said. He shuddered visibly and shook his head. "No. I don't think so."
"Oh, but you must."
As he pushed open the door into the darkened room, Shimazu heard the whisper of steel behind him. He turned to see Matsuo standing ready with his katana.
"This had better not be a trick."
"No trick, I assure you," Shimazu said, fascinated by the odd pattern of light shimmering off the blade. "They have given everything but their lives for the Emperor. They deserve at least passing honor."
He switched on the newly installed light and watched Matsuo cautiously approach the door
. Shimazu stayed close beside him. He knew how the younger Okumo would react: For a moment or two he would be mesmerized with horror. That was when Shimazu would strike.
The end will be quick, Shimazu thought. Too quick for his gaijinlike arrogance.
First, paralysis of all the voluntary muscles, followed by the involuntary muscles. He would fall to the floor like a puppet without strings, and while he was staring up at Shimazu, his lungs would cease to fill with air, and his heart would slow to a stop. The brother carrying the seeds of the Order's destruction would be dead at last.
He tightened his grip on the doku-ippen hidden in the sleeve of his kimono and moved closer.
* * *
Matsuo refused to let the monk get behind him. He might be armed or he might try to lock him in this foul-smelling space. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he heard a breathy, rustling chorus of misery, then he saw the children, sprawled all over the room like limp bags of sand—eyeless sockets, fused nasal passages, open mouths.
And from the corner of his eye he caught a sudden flash of movement. Instinctively he ducked away and swung with the katana.
Shimazu cried out and clutched at his wrist as his right hand tumbled free through the air. Matsuo saw it sail out the door, trailing a crimson stream, a thin brown needle still clutched between its thumb and forefinger. Shimazu sank to his knees. Twin geysers of blood pumped into the air momentarily before he compressed the arteries with his left hand.
"Guards!" he screamed. His voice had lost all its languorous and sinuous qualities. It was now harsh and ragged. "Guards! Kill him! Kiiiill hiiiiim!"
Matsuo was tempted to slit his throat to shut him up, but knew it was too late. He hurried out to the middle of the floor.
Naka. He had to find Naka. But as he looked around he saw a dozen or more of the Kakureta Kao guards pour from their quarters with drawn katana and charge toward him.