Collector of Secrets (3 page)

The priest appeared to be thirty years old at most, and his calm demeanor offered an aura of peace that defied his youthful age. Black layered robes covered him, except for a hint of white at the V-neck collar and the tightly bound cloth around his wrists. His slender face sported a thin beard running downward from the bottom of his lower lip and extending out along his chin, like an inverted
T
.

The train’s soft female voice floated into the air—
“Doa ga shimarimasu. Go chui kudasai”
—before switching smoothly to English. “The door is closing. Please be careful.” The doors rolled shut and the train shuddered into motion.

Max waited a moment, unsure whether he would embarrass the man by directly acknowledging the intervention. But the opportunity to interact with a priest proved irresistible, and he followed tradition, bowing his head while expressing his gratitude. “
Domo arigato.”

“You’re welcome. I am sorry for those boys.” The priest responded in a clear English voice. “You are American?” He pocketed a Nintendo DS into the folds of his robe, while a wooden string of prayer beads remained clutched in his right hand.

Max was impressed by the near-perfect intonation. “Yeah, I’m from California.”

“Aaaah,” the priest said knowingly. “Where did you grow up?”

“I . . .”
The guy seemed uncharacteristically straightforward for a Japanese—perhaps a common trait of religious figures—but Max wasn’t about to reveal to a stranger that he had spent his childhood shuttling between a dozen towns and cities. “I lived in L.A.”

“I went there once, while attending school in San Francisco.” The priest pressed his palms together as he spoke. “My name is Toshi.”

Max knew the routine of questions that would follow. It was always the same:
What do you think of Japan? Are you an English teacher? Do you speak Japanese?
Even so, he chose to play along. Meeting an English speaking Shinto priest was a rare opportunity indeed.

The twenty-six-minute ride passed swiftly. Finally, Toshi stood as the train slowed on the approach to Hamamatsucho station, and Max couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment. “My English school is just one more stop,” he noted casually. “Do you work around here?”

“No. This is where I live.” Toshi leaned against a pole to brace himself. “Please come visit me anytime.” As the train ground to a halt, he bowed and held out a black business card with both hands.

While accepting the card, Max caught a brief glimpse of the priest’s pinkie ring, the prayer beads having covered it until now. The rapid movement made it difficult to clearly discern, but the image was of multiple gleaming petals, like those of a golden flower.

The priest vanished into the swirling bustle of the platform’s crowd, accompanied by the soothing female voice announcing the train’s departure.

Soon, the station disappeared into the distance while Max stared at the embossed lettering on the card—
SUZUCO GAMES
—and the map to Toshi’s house on the back.

IT WASN’T really an English lesson, but Takahito Murayama knew it was supposed to be. At least that’s how the Thursday meetings with Max had begun nine months earlier. They were located at his office on the third floor of a narrow five-story building squeezed between two other structures of equally slim proportion. Built in the late 1970s and situated in Tokyo’s Minato ward, the brown tile exterior was frosted with big-city grime. The Plum Tree Restaurant occupied the ground floor. A cramped staircase leading to the floors above could only be accessed with a nod to the building’s owner, who sat entrenched at an outdoor table. The laconic man was surly at best. Unshaven, he smoked an endless chain of non-filtered cigarettes while consuming a bottomless cup of green tea.

The first few lessons had been filled with quiet tension, despite reassurance that Max was the best teacher at his school. Mr. Murayama had decided beforehand that he wouldn’t cooperate with the young American, who he assumed would be overly talkative, poorly educated, and vastly overconfident. He didn’t care that his daughter, Yoko, had insisted he keep up his linguistic skills, even at ninety years old. Her mask of concern only served to remind him that she simply wanted him out of the way. Her English school was transforming into a corporation, and she didn’t appreciate his meddling. She told him the language training would keep him sharp, and she was not a woman to take no for an answer.

At their introductory meeting, Mr. Murayama had made a point to sit with arms folded and a dour look on his wrinkled face. However, surprisingly, the boy was not at all as he had presumed. In fact, Max was bright and articulate, with a great interest in history and an even greater number of questions. His infectious curiosity about Japan’s past—the Glorious Empire—grew on the old man, who now looked forward to the Thursday meetings. It was a time to relive old victories and remember friends and places long since gone.

Setting down his pen, he ran his fingers along the latest entry in his personal catalog. Goose bumps prickled his aging arms. A sweet and familiar sense of satisfaction rushed down his back. Gathering rare and beautiful artifacts had been a childhood hobby that had grown into a full-time passion. The addition of new possessions never lost its youthful thrill. Unable to resist temptation, he flipped the pages backward before his eyes came to rest, yet again, on the most significant entry—all those years ago.

The diary—when I’m gone the world will finally know its truths.

He shuddered and slammed the catalog shut.

Rising from the desk, he shuffled into the hallway, turning left toward the kitchen, intent on setting the kettle. From the window of what had been the secretary’s office, he watched the buzz of traffic along the two-laned street below. Soon, the steaming whistle caught his attention. After pouring water and adjusting his black, square-framed glasses, he opened a hidden door. With a firm grip on the tea tray, he shuffled his slippers back into the office sanctuary.

Faded cherry-wood paneling and an assortment of filing cabinets framed the room. Cavernous by Japanese standards, the office was thirty-five feet deep and twenty feet wide. Near the front, a black leather sofa and two matching chairs huddled around a wooden coffee table, set before a row of street-side windows. Several feet back, in the center of the room sat a gray metal desk, buried beneath an avalanche of loose paper. Behind the desk was a waist-high beige drafting cabinet, while on the side wall opposite the hallway door, the years of his distinguished diplomatic service were displayed in hundreds of pictures hung above an unbroken row of two-drawer cabinets.

Setting down the tray, Mr. Murayama lowered himself slowly into the first of the soft leather chairs. It wouldn’t be long, he thought, before his slippers stopped bringing him to this office, which had been his shelter for twenty years, since the end of his career.

Looking up, he let his gaze roam over the long wall, and he wondered what would eventually become of the many framed pictures. He considered all the treasures filling this office and the storage room at the far end of the hall. They were overflowing with artifacts he’d gathered. Once he was gone, Yoko would take the art prints in the drafting cabinet, but she would throw away or sell the rest. She moved too quickly, wanted too much, and didn’t know the true value that the past could hold. That’s why he kept the key ring to himself. Even if Yoko was in her mid-sixties, he could still see in her the same little girl, desperately trying to prove herself superior.

A picture on the end table caught his eye, taken in 1961, during his first posting to Washington, D.C.. Distant memories sometimes felt more real than the present, and at other times they drifted away like smoke in the wind.

There I am, and the man next to me is . . . who is he?

A wave of panic washed over him.

I’m already losing my body—please don’t let me lose my mind.

He commanded himself to remain calm.

Focus! Pull all the pieces together before trying to solve it.

He let his mind’s eye wander back to the Georgetown house on Reservoir Road. Lush trees surrounded the three-story light-brick federal-style home. A cocktail party was underway and he was standing on the grass. The wife of a guest appeared with a camera and asked the three men to cluster together. She asked the banker to move to the group’s center.

That’s right. The man was the chairman of a bank, a Rockefeller, perhaps. The other man, with the mole above his lip, is Kazue Saito—my old friend’s protégé.

Silently, Mr. Murayama congratulated himself on piecing together the puzzle and once again defying the relentless hands of time.

ACROSS TOWN, Kazue Saito took a single step into the green park space. He paused to adjust his Burberry coat and black-brimmed hat. Only his skittish eyes roamed above the white surgical mask covering his face. He didn’t have a cold.

On the sidewalk behind him, the intermittent flow of office workers increased as the clock drew toward noon. To the east stood a cluster of sparkling white pine trees belonging to a nearby shrine. Finger-sized fortune papers were wrapped around the protruding limbs, as if coating them in a thick blanket of hoar frost. Sacred wishes for money, health, happiness, long life, and true love covered every branch, twig, and bud.

Today, at last, Kazue felt that his prayers would finally be answered. Living on a pension was agony, and now the suffocating burden of his gambling debt would be lifted. He knew it was wrong to offer the secrets for sale. They weren’t really his to sell, after all. But constant threats from the loan sharks overrode reason, forcing him to post the “For Sale” item on the Internet.

It didn’t take long to receive a bite. The reply simply gave a time and place, along with instructions to look for a single tree branch. The cryptic nature of the message indicated it was likely mafia—the
Yakuza
—but he was past the point of caring. His life needed to change.

Kazue glanced at the lone oak in the center of the park, not thirty feet away, and then he saw it. Sunlight flashed on the single strip of white tied to one branch of the otherwise barren tree. Rushing forward, he sent a dozen gurgling pigeons flapping upward. He glanced around nervously as he untied the message—a job usually reserved only for priests. The message within held a phone number and his whole body shook as he dialed it.

A female receptionist confirmed his internet post before forwarding the call to a gruff voice that answered on the second ring. “Oto Kodama here.”

He knew the
Yakuza
leader’s name from the media. The aging man was reputed to be ruthless and sadistic, and the timid words stuck in Kazue’s throat. “Y . . . You left me a message on a tree.”

“The book I’ve been searching for? Do you have it with you?”

“No . . . not exactly, but I have information on where you can get it. It is easily obtainable.”

“Meet me tonight—11:30 p.m.—at the shrine of the honorable dead. You get half the money when you deliver this information, and the other half when I have the book.”

The loan sharks would want all their money, half was unacceptable “But I need the full amount.”

Kodama shouted, “My way, or there is no deal. Am I clear?”

“Y . . . Yes.”

The connection went cold.

T
he
Yakuza
’s youthful eyes watched from behind the bushes ringing the park. Like the lethal gaze of a tiger stalking skittish prey, they followed Kazue Saito as he hurried back toward the sidewalk. A primal grunt of anticipation escaped the hunter’s thick lips. Cigarette smoke curled slowly from each of his nostrils.