Enzan: The Far Mountain (2 page)

What they get is me. The thick forearms of a swordsman. A shock of dense, dark hair. Eyes the greyish blue of the shingle by the shore of a cold sea. Dressed up in the dark blue garments worn by warriors from another place and another time.

But there was no disappointment in Ito’s expression. He was carefully studying me, a man sipping at some invisible nectar in the air. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up and I tingled from the faint current that was passing through me.

I knew what I was feeling—
haragei
. It’s the weird sixth sense the Japanese believe is a hallmark of the advanced martial artist. They say with
haragei
, you can sense the skill of an opponent just by being in close proximity to him. I realized Ito had this skill. Some people think I have it too. I’m not so sure about that, but Yamashita’s a master of
haragei
and I’ve felt his force washing over me enough to know I was being “read” by Ito.

Ito’s eyes shifted as if he were coming to some new realization about me. “Yes, a pity, Dr. Burke. It would be most instructive …” his voice tapered off for a moment. “But please excuse me. I am sent to inquire as to whether you would do me the honor of meeting my superiors.”

“I’m sorry, Ito-san,” I told him, “but Yamashita Sensei is not available and will not be returning for several weeks.”

This was always how it started. The quietly contained men in the dark suits. The invitation to a meeting. Yamashita’s past was largely a mystery to me, but it seemed as if these people had a hold on him. I wasn’t sure why, but it was something that could not be denied.

But my teacher is aging now. I feared another summons would be more than he could stand. I wanted to protect him from that, like a man shielding an ember, fearful it will burn itself out without protection. I was ready to dig in my heels on this one. But Ito took me off guard.

“Just so,” he answered, smiling. His teeth were even and very white. “But excuse me, perhaps I have been unclear. My principals,” and here he nodded significantly at the business card in my hand, “wish to speak with
you
.”

I looked at the card without saying anything, trying to regain my mental balance.

Ito took a step closer, lowering his voice to a confidential tone. “With the greatest respect, Dr. Burke, this is a matter of some urgency. We wonder if you would be willing to come with me. Now.”

He was trying to flatter me. And I was curious. But mostly, I thought I should go simply to ensure that they wouldn’t come back at a later date for Yamashita. Because if they did, he’d go with them, no matter what crazy plot they were hatching. That was the kind of hold they had on him. I knew he didn’t need that. I also knew it was my job to protect him.

These people were dangerous. I’d seen them in action before. They operate in a world of obligation and honor, where it is assumed that some people command and some people serve. And all who serve are expendable. It’s dressed up in mythology and ritual that’s thousands of years old. And no matter what they say, it exerts a powerful hold on the Japanese, even today.

But not me. I was going into this with my eyes wide open. Or so I thought. I looked at Ito’s
meishi
and the embossed golden chrysanthemum on the card. He was a messenger from the Imperial House of Japan, the longest line of serving monarchs in the world and the descendants of the sun goddess herself. He didn’t impress me.

But I went anyway.

Chapter 2

We rode in a limousine. I always feel uncomfortable lounging in the back of one of those cars. My formative years had been spent ranged along the bench-like seats of a series of overloaded station wagons with my brothers and sisters. Those vehicles rocked and swayed on shock absorbers that were almost as exhausted as my parents. The cars were white or green or blue, depending on the year, filthy and mottled with rust. They all burned oil in the same way and were the type of lumbering gas-guzzlers preferred by the Burke clan.

Ito’s limo was night black and shone from meticulous attendance. I leaned back in the leather seats and watched the traffic. It was cold on the streets; my breath fogged the window for a brief second until the cabin heater wiped it away with luxurious efficiency. We were hermetically sealed, protected from the winter cold. The tinted windows prevented the riffraff from looking in at us. The ride was quiet and smooth and distinctly unreal. Ito stretched out in an opposite corner of the car, comfortable in this environment, and watched me.

I looked over and nodded at his thick hands. “Kyokushinkai?” It’s a karate school renowned for its devotion to breaking techniques.

He smiled and corrected me. “Shotokan.” His voice had a self-satisfied tone, as if the idea that he’d study the Kyokushinkai style was beneath him. It figured. Shotokan was a much more mainstream karate style, and Kyokushinkai’s founder had, after all, been a Korean. They’re big for pedigree in the service of the Imperial House, even down to the details of work out partners. Shotokan was the right choice for someone like Ito. And someone like Ito had probably made the right step every day of his life—going to the right school, developing the right connections. He was cultivated for a life of service in the vast governmental bureaucracy of Japan. If I had thought about it, I would have realized there was no way he was going to spoil his prospects by studying with a renegade group of Kyokushinkai board breakers, no matter how much he might have wished he could. It wasn’t particularly surprising. Duty trumps desire almost every time in Japan.

I wondered whether someone like Ito even felt any struggle between duty and desire anymore. Think of a bonsai tree, bound into a shape not of its own choosing. Does the tree dream of another, wilder form? Probably not. The gardener dreams. The tree simply bends to his will.

I sometimes yearn for that type of surrender, the placid numbness of unquestioning obedience. But it’s just not in me. One of the great ironies of my life is that I’m always trying to avoid being controlled, and yet I have yoked myself to studying an art that demands total surrender. I like to think it’s my choice and I can break free whenever I wish. But I’m not so sure anymore. After all, there I was. I had no real interest in getting involved with these people. I’d dealt with them before, and they always seemed to get what they wanted and then faded back into the shadows while the rest of us were left to clean up the pieces and nurse our wounds. This wasn’t going to end well. But even as it chafed, the yoke compelled me. I had a duty of sorts to perform. I needed to protect Yamashita. From them.

That two-word conversation about karate styles was it for Ito and me. We were both comfortable with silence and it’s not a long trip from Red Hook to Gotham anyway. I sniffed the leather upholstery appreciatively, listened to the tires hum along the road surface, and watched as we popped up out of the Battery Tunnel and arrived in Manhattan. I tried not to speculate too much about what was going to happen. It’s a waste of energy. But deep down, I must have been anticipating certain things and so I felt a spurt of surprise when we slipped past 299 Park Avenue. I hadn’t been consciously aware of it, but I suppose I had thought Ito was taking me to the Japanese Consulate. Instead, we continued down Park Ave. and across East Forty-Ninth to the Waldorf Astoria hotel. I nodded to myself in appreciation. Conveniently close. Yet nicely separate.
They think of everything
.

We took an elevator and, in the foyer of an elegant hotel suite, another flat-eyed, fit young man in a dark suit frisked me before letting me in. I wondered if the Japanese were simply cloning them. “Tell him I left my throwing stars at home,” I said. Ito smiled in apology, but the pat down proceeded. It struck me then:
They think I’m dangerous
. This was not something I usually gave a great deal of thought to. I do what I do, and the rarefied little world Yamashita has created has grown familiar and unexceptional to me. But looking at it from the outside, my teacher and I must have seemed like strange beasts. And with that realization, another thought came to me:
Dangerous? Well, I suppose I am.

The suite had a conference area: a highly polished wooden table and well-padded chairs. A credenza along one wall featured a silver coffee service and some fruit. An old man, his face blotchy with age spots, was in a wheelchair to my left at the far end of a table. He had a narrow, pointed jaw and a broad forehead. Sparse strands of iron grey hair were plastered over his pate. The pronounced skin of his epicanthic fold made his eyes appear sleepy, but a closer look showed me an old reptile, alert and ready for a meal. The long fingers of his hands were gnarled with arthritis—they rested on the polished wood of the table like old claws.

A second Japanese man sat at the long side of the table. He was middle aged and growing stout, a compact man with flat cheekbones and short salt and pepper hair. He rose from his seat as I approached, came around the table, and extended a hand.

“Dr. Burke, thank you for coming. I am Miyazaki Tokio.” He bowed in the direction of the man in the wheelchair. “This is my father.” The old lizard remained motionless.

Miyazaki ushered me to a seat across from him at the table. I could sense Ito and the other guard watching from a discrete distance while my host fussed with the coffee service. “You prefer your coffee black,
neh?
As do I.” There were manila file folders arrayed before his place at the table, but they were ignored for a time as he served us and we both made a show of sipping the coffee with polite appreciation. Miyazaki inquired about my trip. The health of my master. He was obviously tense, but etiquette is etiquette, and he did a good job of playing the host. His father said nothing. I could hear the faint phlegmy rattle of his breathing, but other than that, he seemed to play no part in the meeting and showed no overt interest.

Finally, I decided this had gone on long enough. One of the nice things about being a
gaijin
, a foreigner, is that the Japanese don’t expect good manners from you. If I had known these people or wanted to somehow impress them, I might have played along. But I didn’t. I set my cup down on its translucent saucer and leaned back in the chair.

“Excellent coffee, Miyazaki-san.” I thought it interesting that he seemed to know how I liked my coffee. That he knew when Yamashita was going to be away. They were facts I’d ponder later. “But you haven’t gone to all this trouble just to invite me over for a drink.” I looked directly at the father and arched my eyebrows quizzically. It was very un-Japanese of me. You never make a direct inquiry like that, especially to the senior person present. The whole reason the old man sat at the far end of the table was so he could watch me but I could not watch him. At least that’s the theory. I was expected to talk to the younger Miyazaki, sitting across from me, but all the real power was really in the clawlike hands of the old thing sitting to my left. So I decided to refuse to play along and rattle them with my lack of couth.

But the younger Miyazaki merely blinked and smiled, unruffled. He looked at me mildly, as if studying an exotic animal in the zoo. He nodded. “Indeed, Dr. Burke. Please excuse me. I understand your desire to get to the point.” He smiled again, as if the use of the colloquialism was a way to show off his language skill. But the Japanese nod and smile for many reasons. Sometimes they are agreeing with you. Other times they are simply indicating they have heard what you have said. Sometimes, it’s because they are deeply uneasy. I wondered which reason made Miyazaki smile.

I gestured at the files. “The point, I suppose, is in there?”

Again the smile. But it was tight and fleeting, more a grimace than anything else. Miyazaki took a breath, as if bracing himself. One hand pressed on the pile of folders, an unconscious expression of a wish to keep them forever closed. But he couldn’t.

I sensed movement on the periphery of the room and Ito appeared at the table. He silently asked for permission to join us and, for once, Miyazaki’s facade cracked and he nodded wearily in acquiescence. Ito sat next to me on the right and reached over for the files.

“Dr. Burke,” Ito began, “what we are discussing here is highly confidential. The Miyazaki family would ask for your utmost discretion.” I just nodded. Across from me Miyazaki raised a hesitant finger. The younger man paused for a fraction of a second, then slid a piece of typescript in front of me. “With respect, Miyazaki-san asks you to sign this nondisclosure agreement.” Ito’s voice was distant and formal, a sign of just how uncomfortable he was with the request.

I pushed it away, back toward Miyazaki. “Don’t be ridiculous. You asked me to come here. If you want to talk with me, talk, otherwise I’m leaving.” I stood up.

The old man croaked something: a name perhaps, or a command. I didn’t catch it, but the man who had frisked me at the door appeared by my side and put a restraining hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t a light touch, and I felt my core tightening and the anticipation of a fight spiraling up within me. It’s a familiar feeling. I wonder sometimes whether I like it too much. I leaned in toward Miyazaki.

“Tell him to get his hand off me, Miyazaki. I’m only going to say it once. If you can’t trust me, you wouldn’t have invited me up here. Don’t insult me with a piece of paper.”

He sighed, closed his eyes, opened them, and nodded at the goon at my side. The hand came off my shoulder. But I didn’t sit down.

“Please, Dr. Burke,” Miyazaki said, and his voice was small and tight, like a man being choked. “We need your help.”

I looked at Ito. He was standing as well, and watching me with tremendous interest, his eyes lit up with anticipation. Part of him wanted me to sit down; it was his duty to make that happen. But part of him would have liked to see me tussle with the man standing by my shoulder. He was the only honest person in the room. I don’t know whether I liked him for it, but at least I understood him.

“Please,” Miyazaki begged, gesturing to my chair. And there was something familiar in the tilt of his head, in the cast of his eyes. So I sat down, if only to try to figure out what was creating that sense of familiarity.

Ito sat down, too, and arranged the files in front of him. He took out some color photos of a striking young Japanese woman. Wide eyes, long black hair that shimmered with highlights that seemed almost blue. She had a playful smile that almost made you feel she was mocking the camera. But it was subtle and it could have been my imagination. “Miyazaki-san’s daughter Chie,” Ito told me.

“How old?”

“Twenty-three,” he said. “After graduating from Tokyo Daigaku, she came last year to New York for graduate work.” I nodded. Tokyo University is Japan’s most prestigious school. A child of someone like Miyazaki would have gone there. But there’s an allure to study in the United States, and it’s not unusual for people to come west for grad school. I looked across at Miyazaki, his face once more impassive. I wondered how he’d felt about his daughter slipping her chain and getting loose among the barbarians. Probably like most fathers, I realized. Then Ito passed me another picture.

In this one, the mocking smile was more fully in place. The eyes seemed narrower and her long hair had been cut shorter in a choppy style and was streaked with pink and green. It wasn’t a formal posed shot. It was taken outside and the blurry background of building and people made me wonder if it was a surveillance photo taken with a long lens.

“Nice nose ring,” I said to Ito, then regretted it as soon as the words popped out. I was getting the picture: child of privilege running amok. Miyazaki didn’t wince at my comment, but it must have been hard for him.
Sorry, Dad
.

“She has taken to her new environment,” Ito ventured an understatement. The old man at the end of the table snorted.

“We have,” Miyazaki began, then cleared his throat, “I have deep concerns about my daughter and the people she is associating with, Dr. Burke.”

I sighed inwardly. The daughter-gone-wild-in-grad-school story is as common as it is sad. Kids breaking free. Parents holding on. Lots of room for hurt feelings. But the sheer grind of life imposes a type of conformist gravity. Most people eventually fall out of orbit. It takes a lot of sex, drugs, and rock and roll to hit escape velocity. The probability was that she’d be OK. But I’m not a parent; maybe probable isn’t good enough to let you sleep at night.

How was I supposed to change this for him? “I don’t see any role I can play in this problem, Miyazaki-san. Have you spoken with her?”

He looked down at the polished surface of the table. “Numerous times. And each conversation is worse than the last.”

“She has stopped attending classes,” Ito added. “She hasn’t been in her apartment for weeks.”

I looked from one to the other. “If she’s been out of contact, you can file a missing-person report.” The old man snorted again.

Miyazaki was shaking his head. “She is in sporadic contact with us, Dr. Burke. But we do not know exactly where she is.” He was clearly uncomfortable but didn’t seem eager to explain.

I shrugged. “Cut off the money. That usually brings them back.” Miyazaki’s shoulders slumped. He looked at his father, whose eyes gleamed with anger.
This is a conversation they’ve had before
.

“I am afraid it is more complicated and delicate a situation than that,” Ito interjected. He paused and looked toward the two other men at the table. “It is a matter of the greatest delicacy and involves the family honor.” And now he seemed reluctant to continue. Miyazaki was silent. His face was stone.