The Fifth Profession

  “Standard procedure.” Savage imagined Taro's students using motorbikes to follow the limousine while taking care to keep an unobtrusive distance. They'd maintain surveillance and continue reporting by radio until Akira had a chance to catch up to the motorcade and cautiously follow. No matter which street Shirai's driver used, Akira would be informed.

  “As we expected, Shirai finally became impatient,” Akira said. “He realized we had no intention of arriving for our constantly postponed meeting.”

  “He's either confused or furious. The main thing is, we've got him responding to us, not the other way around,” Savage said. Subduing tension, he watched Akira steer around a corner, then attempt to proceed through another stream of dense traffic. “But if Shirai goes into a public place, we won't be able to get him alone to talk with him.”

  “No matter,” Akira said. “We'll continue to follow. Eventually we'll find our opportunity. Where he's least expecting us. Where he doesn't have an army of guards.”

  “So in other words, relax and enjoy the ride.”

  “Relax?” Akira glanced at Savage and raised his eyebrows. “I'll never get used to American irony.” A voice spoke from the walkie-talkie. After responding, Akira glanced again at Savage. “At the next street, when I turn left, I should be two blocks behind the limousine.”

  “In this traffic, we won't be able to see the car,” Savage said.

  “Taro-sensei‘s students will continue their surveillance. They also have motorbikes keeping pace on each parallel street. If Shirai's driver turns, we'll be alerted.”

  10

  They continued struggling through traffic, heading west, though sometimes changing to a parallel street, guided by walkie-talkie reports from Taro's students. As dusk thickened, traffic dwindled. They reached a highway, increased speed, and suddenly saw the limousine ahead of them, two Nissan sedans providing protection, one in front and one in back. Akira radioed to the surveillance team, thanking them, telling most of them to return to Taro. Only a few would now be needed to help follow Shirai. Keeping several cars between the Toyota and the motorcade, Akira drove warily.

  Savage rubbed his aching shoulder. “Wherever Shirai's going, it looks like he'll soon be out of the city.”

  Akira shrugged. “There are many adjacent ones.”

  “Even so, this is taking so long Shirai must have an important reason to drive this far.” Savage brooded and added, “Those people at the demonstration—I can't help being surprised that Shirai's been able to attract so much support.”

  Akira kept his eyes on his quarry. “Don't be misled. He still has an upward battle. Most Japanese don't agree with him, although his influence is growing day by day. The economic miracle, the new prosperity, makes my countrymen delighted to do business with outsiders, as long as the bargain's in our favor. Cultural contamination, however much it incenses Shirai, is something that Japanese born after the war find intriguing.”

  “Then why are the demonstrations so large?” Savage asked.

  “Large compared to what? In nineteen sixty, hundreds of thousands protested the renewal of the defense treaty with America. A pro-American politician was killed publicly with a sword. The demonstrators wanted the U.S. military to leave Japan, principally because they didn't want nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. As Taro explained last night, we can never forget that we're the only nation ever to have suffered atomic attacks. In nineteen sixty-five, a U.S. aircraft carrier lost a hydrogen bomb off the coast of Japan. Your government didn't admit to the accident until nineteen eighty-one but claimed that the bomb had fallen five hundred miles offshore. A lie. In nineteen eighty-nine, we finally learned that the bomb was only eighty miles offshore. Such incidents and deceptions fuel right-wing anti-American resentment. … Have you ever heard of Mishima?”

  “Of course,” Savage said.

  Mishima had been one of Japan's most famous novelists. In terms of his personality and subject matter, the closest American equivalent Savage could think of was Hemingway. Mishima's code of discipline had attracted a devoted core of followers, what amounted to a private army. On special occasions, they'd worn an elaborate version of the Japanese military uniform, a costume that Mishima himself had designed. Because of the novelist's fame and influence, the officers at one of Japan's Ground Self-defense Forces bases had permitted Mishima and his men to practice martial exercises there.

  In 1970, Mishima and a handful of his closest worshipers had arrived at the base, requested permission to speak with its commander, subdued the man, taken over his headquarters, and demanded that the soldiers on the base be assembled so that Mishima could make a speech to them. The authorities—unable to rescue the hostage—agreed to Mishima's demands. The speech turned out to be a disturbing, ranting, rambling harangue, the basis of which was the decline of Japan, the country's need to regain its purity, to assert its greatness, to pursue its god-ordained destiny: militarism combined with a pre-Shirai version of the Force of Amaterasu. The soldiers, compelled to gather for Mishima's tirade, jeered.

  Humiliated, outraged, Mishima returned to the commander's office, unsheathed the sword he wore—a vestige of the samurai tradition—knelt …

  And committed seppuku, impaling his bowels.

  But not before he commanded his most loyal follower to stand beside him with another sword, to complete the ritual and chop off his head.

  “The incident created a controversy,” Akira said. “Many Japanese admired Mishima's principles and courage. At the same time, they questioned the futility of his suicidal outrage. What purpose did it serve? Social pressure hadn't forced him to do it. Couldn't he have found an effective, constructive way to express his despair? Or had he truly believed that his suicide would prompt others to take up his cause?”

  Savage didn't know what to answer. He thought of his father, not the stranger he'd met in Baltimore, but the man he remembered from his youth, the man he'd so loved, the man who one night had put a bullet through his brain. Oh, yes, indeed, a part of Savage could very much empathize with Mishima's desperation.

  But Savage was conditioned by American values. Pragmatism. Survival, even with shame. Endurance, no matter the cost to pride. Don't let the bastards get you down.

  Christ.

  Akira broke the awkward silence. “Mishima's a perfect example. A symbol. Twenty years after his suicide, he's still remembered. Respected. So maybe he did achieve his purpose.” Akira lifted a hand from the steering wheel to gesture. “Not right away, as Mishima hoped. But eventually. You have to understand. In Japan, left-wing demonstrations are squashed. They're equated with communism, and communists are hated. Everyone is equal? No. Japan is based on levels. Shogun to daimyo to samurai to … This country's a hierarchy. But right-wing demonstrations. They're another matter. The authorities tolerate them—because those demonstrations advocate a system of control, of social order, every element in its place, master to servant, husband to wife, parent to child, employer to subordinate.”

  “You sound”—Savage frowned—”as if you agree with that.”

  “What I'm trying to explain is that the right wing is a minority here, but it's nonetheless powerful, and it forms the base of Shirai's followers. What he needs, of course, is to turn huge numbers of moderates into extremists, and so far he hasn't been able to do that. So the majority of Japanese watch the demonstrations with interest and perhaps with sympathy … but not with sufficient conviction to act.”

  “Not yet.”

  Akira shrugged. “We can try to learn from history, but it's almost impossible to reverse its trend. As much as I hate Commodore Perry's ‘black ships’ and what they did to my country, I don't believe Shirai can take us back to the cultural purity of the Tokugawa Shogunate. He needs a catalyzing issue, a rallying cry, and he hasn't been able to find it, no more than Mishima could.”

  “That's not to say he isn't trying.”

  Eyes dark with melancholy, Akira nodded, staring ahead toward Shirai's limousine. The sun had disappeared. In
the gloom, passing headlights revealed the motorcade. Only occasionally was traffic so sparse that Akira had to rely on the taillights of the limousine and its Nissan escorts to guide him. He stayed well back.

  Savage saw no indication that the motorcade knew it was being followed.

  “To reply to your earlier comment,” Akira said, “I condemn Shirai's tactics but respect his values. It disturbs me. A man with whom I'd normally identify … Circumstances force me to treat him as a potential enemy.”

  “Or maybe he's a victim. Like us.”

  “We'll soon find out. His nightmare will perhaps at last explain ours.”

  11

  The motorcade left the highway. With increased caution, Akira followed, maintaining a greater distance from the limousine. From time to time, cars passed, breaking the pattern of traffic, preventing Shirai's guards from noticing a constant pair of headlights far behind them.

  One road led to another, then another, twisting, turning. Like a maze, Savage thought, his sense of direction confused. The glare of cities had given way to glowing lamps in windows of isolated villages. Uneasy, he peered out his passenger window. In the night, huge shapes loomed beside him.

  “Are those mountains?” Worms of apprehension squirmed through Savage's bowels.

  “We're entering a branch of the Japanese Alps,” Akira said.

  Savage squinted toward the hulking crests with greater dismay. He tensed as the Toyota crossed a narrow bridge beneath which moonlight glimmered off a rushing river. The gorge veered sharply upward toward dark wooded bluffs.

  “Alps?” Savage asked.

  “The term exaggerates. These aren't like the craggy mountains in Europe, more like the high rolling hills in the eastern United States.”

  “But don't you … ? I suddenly feel … My God, it's like we're back in Pennsylvania.” Savage shuddered. “Dark. Not April but October. Instead of leaves beginning to appear, they're starting to fall. The trees look as bare as when …”

  “We drove Kamichi to the Medford Gap Mountain Retreat.”

  “Which we never did.”

  “Yes,” Akira said.

  Savage shivered.

  “I've been sensing it, too.” Akira's voice sounded thick. “The eerie conviction that I've been here before, though I haven't.”

  The Toyota crossed another precipitous gorge. Seized by vertigo, Savage's mind swirled.

  But this time, it wasn't jamais vu but déjà vu that assaulted him. Or a combination, the former triggering the latter. His intestines roiling with fear, with a terrifying sense of unreality, Savage studied Akira, the man he'd seen beheaded.

  The road kept winding, rising and dipping through the impossibly familiar wooded mountains.

  Japan. Pennsylvania.

  Shirai. Kamichi.

  False memories.

  Ghosts.

  Savage's terror worsened. Deep in his soul, he desperately wanted to blurt to Akira to stop, to turn around. Every protective instinct warned him to abandon the search, to go back to Rachel, to retreat, to learn to live with his nightmares.

  Because his guts slithered with a horrible foreboding that a much greater nightmare awaited him.

  Akira apparently read his thoughts, or maybe felt the same stomach-wrenching terror.

  “No,” Akira said. “We've come this far. We've been through too much. We can't stop. I need to know. For the rest of my life, I refuse to be haunted by phantoms.”

  As Savage flinched, remembering the flash of the blade that had sliced off Akira's head, another intense emotion erupted within him. The surge overpowered his fright and seized his body, every part of it, his torso, his limbs, his veins, his blood.

  Anger. A rage beyond anything he'd ever felt. Astonishing.

  He'd never known such fury. Graham would have been appalled. Avoid emotion, his mentor had always said. It's unprofessional. It keeps you from being objective. It leads to mistakes.

  Not this time! Savage thought. It'll keep me from making mistakes. I'll control it! I'll use it! To cancel fear! To give me strength! To persist!

  “That's right,” Savage said. He dug his fingernails into his palms, drawing power from the lancing pain. “Someone messed with my mind, and by God, I want to know who and why. And someone, damn it, is going to pay.”

  12

  Steering around a curve, Akira abruptly pointed. He stamped a foot on the brake. Disturbingly, the road ahead was totally dark. No taillights glowed in the distance. Savage tingled.

  The motorcade had vanished.

  Savage drew his Beretta. “A trap. They realized they were being followed.”

  “No. I was careful.”

  “But for the last ten minutes, we've been the only headlights behind them. Maybe, on principle, they decided to investigate. They pulled off the road, switched their lights off, and now they're waiting. If we drive past, the escort cars will try to flank us, force us onto the shoulder, and find out who we are.”

  Akira stared toward the darkness beyond the Toyota's headlights. “Assuming your assessment is correct, they know now for sure that they were followed—because we stopped when we no longer saw their taillights.”

  Savage rolled down his window. “Switch off the engine.”

  Akira did, not needing to ask what Savage intended.

  In the sudden quiet, Savage listened for sounds on the road ahead, for the rumbling of engines, the crunch of footsteps stalking along the gravel shoulder, the scrape of branches in the shrubs that flanked the road.

  But all he heard were the natural nightsounds of the forest—crickets screeching, occasional fluttering wings, boughs swaying in a gentle breeze.

  “I may as well turn off the headlights, too,” Akira said. “We don't want to be an obvious target.”

  A cloud drifted over a three-quarter moon. The darkness ahead became absolute.

  Apprehension made Savage's mouth dry. His grasp tightened on the Beretta. “Even without the headlights, they know where we are.”

  “If they're waiting,” Akira said.

  “We have to assume. And if they've got weapons, they might decide to strafe this section of the road.”

  “Imprecise, unprofessional.”

  “But an excellent distraction while someone sneaks at us from the forest and empties a pistol through this open window.”

  Akira started the engine, put the car in reverse, and backed along the road, around the curve. When he stopped, he couldn't do anything about the glow from his brakelights, but presumably the Toyota was now out of sight from potential hunters, and the brakelights at least served the purpose of allowing Akira to see a space where he could park at the side of the road. He took his foot off the pedal, extinguishing the brakelights, and shut off the engine once more. Darkness again surrounded them.

  “We might be overreacting,” Akira said. “I kept a prudent, nonthreatening distance from the motorcade. It's possible that they were far enough ahead of us that they rounded a curve down the road before we rounded this curve. That would explain why we don't see their lights.”

  “Yes.” Tension squeezed Savage's voice. “It's possible.” His voice became thicker. “The thing is, do you want to take the risk of trying to catch up to them when in fact they might have arranged a trap along the road?”

  “Not particularly.” Akira tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Pensive, he nodded, suddenly picked up the walkie-talkie, and spoke in Japanese. A moment later, he received a static-distorted response. The mountains were obviously interfering with the radio waves. Akira concentrated, spoke again, listened to the crackly reply, said one more thing, and set down the walkie-talkie.

  He turned to Savage. “They'll let us know.”

  “The sooner, the better,” Savage said.

  Two hours earlier when Akira had instructed most of Taro's students to drive back to Tokyo, their surveillance duties having been completed, he'd asked that two of them remain in case there were complications in following Shirai.

  The tactic
they'd agreed upon was that the two men would leave Savage and Akira and drive their motorcycles farther ahead, increasing speed, passing Shirai's limousine and its escorts, then roaring into the distance, staying well ahead of the motorcade, to all appearance just two young Japanese on a late-night expedition in a hurry to reach their destination. Now Akira had told them to stop and double back in an effort to learn if the motorcade was still on the road, to determine if the limousine and its escorts had indeed outdistanced Savage and Akira.

  Of course, the two bikers would attract the motorcade's suspicion if they passed it again, this time in the reverse direction. Worse, they might be caught in the trap that Savage suspected was down the road on the shoulder just around this bend.

  But Savage subdued his misgivings by reminding himself that motorcycles had the advantage of being small targets, speedy, easy to maneuver. In case of trouble, the two young man had an excellent—be honest, he told himself; what you mean is decent—chance of veering from assailants and darting away, especially if the cyclists turned off their headlights.

  He admired their bravery. He acknowledged his debt to them. He prayed for their safety.

  And hated the necessity that forced them to risk their lives.

  But what's the alternative? Savage thought.

  None.

  He swallowed sour bile and opened his passenger door. “While we're waiting …”

  Akira opened his own door. “The forest is a great deal safer than this car.”

  Outside, Akira gently closed his door, as did Savage.

  Thinking as one, the two men crouched, crept toward a ditch, and disappeared into bushes. Silent, straining to listen, Savage's fingers taut on his pistol, they waited.

  13

  Beyond the curve, an echo became a drone.

  Savage raised his head.

  The drone increased to a roar. Motorcycles.

  In the night, Savage stiffened, dreading that any moment —now!—he'd hear shots and screams, the squeal of tires, the scrape of metal crashing, flesh and steel skidding on concrete.