Girl Rides the Wind (15 page)

“I’m so sorry,” Hana finally managed to say.

“What is it?” The distress in Hana’s voice made Gyoshin fear the worst – that something had happened to Haru-chan.

“It’s the master, it’s Heiji-sama, he’s…” Her voice trailed off, unable to do much more than wallow in her excessive reverence for the old man. Had he yelled at her again? His temper was becoming more unpredictable everyday. “I went upstairs to check on him…”

“Don’t be so dramatic,
Oba-chan
.” Gyoshin had always thought of Hana as something more than a servant. She’d been part of the household for so long as to seem more like a distant cousin, or an old aunt. “Whatever he said, I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

“He’s dead, Gyoshin-san. What should we do?”

Perhaps not unnaturally, her first thought was of Haru. What would the passing of
Ojii-san
mean for Takako’s child? For a brief moment, an oppressive weight seemed to fall from her shoulders, but a glance through the patio windows at the Sogas’ table brought it all back. If she wanted to live long enough to be of any use to her niece, she would have to conceal the old man’s death. Hana’s hysterical whimpering rang in her ear and brought the practical tasks into focus.

“No, don’t notify the authorities. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She paused to consider what else had to be done. “Call Okamoto-san and ask him to meet me in the morning, as early as he can get there.” She’d need him to operate the ancient backhoe –
did it even work anymore
? It had been several years, at least, since she’d seen it run. If they couldn’t get it started, they’d have to dig by hand, the three of them, and she didn’t want to subject the old people to that sort of labor.

She ended the call and stepped back into the ballroom just as the band stopped playing. Several uniformed agents of the American Shore Patrol had entered, and the lights came up. One of them conferred with Admiral Crichton and Mr. Saito, while Capt Diao listened intently, a nearly inscrutable expression on his face, and Lt Otani attempted to translate.
What can have happened
? They’d planned nothing for this evening.

Gyoshin made her way over to the Sogas’ table and waited to hear the news from Mr. Saito, all the while gauging Minoru-san’s anxiety level and reflecting on the twist in her own situation.
Ojii-san’s
value to the conspiracy had always been his connections and influence. He’d put in a call or remind someone of an ancient debt, and obstacles disappeared. But for the last six months, she’d been the one on the other end of the phone-line whenever an arm needed twisting in his name. No one had seen Heiji Nobutada in public in quite some time, and she had learned that no one was likely to miss him.

“
A
ll lost
?” Durant asked, sitting in the back of one of the vans assigned to shuttle the Marines back to the
Bonhomme Richard
.

“No, of course not,” Perry said. “The first blast disabled the propellers, and the second one breached the hull amidships. It sank in a little over an hour, but that was still plenty of time for the crew to get off.”

“Where’d they say it went down?” Emily asked.

“Eighty miles northeast of the Riau Islands.” Perry ducked his head to avoid clunking it against the doorframe as the van tilted around one corner.

“So probably not pirates that far from the Strait of Malacca, right?” Durant rubbed his chin.

“Yeah, and pirates generally don’t sink ships. They rob them.”

“Wait a second,” Emily said. “Northeast? What were they even doing all the way over there? The shipping lane is at least a hundred miles further west.”

“You got me,” Perry said. “Malfunctioning tech, maybe? It’s not like those ships are state of the art, you know, and if the captain’s skills aren’t…”

“Why are they scrambling the squadron?” Durant scrunched his face into that look of canine perplexity all his friends knew so well. “It’s not like we can be of any service. By the time we get there, there’s not gonna be…

“Okay, fine,” Perry said, letting his exasperation with the situation show. “It’s largely for show. Is that what you want to hear? But you can’t seriously expect that no one in China is gonna think we shouldn’t try to do something. Hell, we’ll be lucky if no one thinks it was our fault for not catching ’em on our first sailing.”

“Yeah, as if anything was gonna happen on the basis of the bullshit intell Diao and Ongpin provided.” Durant gave his best Jarhead snort, a combination of disdain and fatalism that perfectly expressed the hard-won bit of wisdom every Marine carried somewhere deep in his lower intestines, namely that shadowy-clever interests would always be working against them… and only the stupid pragmatism of absolute perseverance could see them through. “Right, LT?”

“Shut up for a second, you clowns,” Emily said. She shrugged Durant’s hammy hand off her shoulder and ticked down the news-flashes on Perry’s smartphone. “The
CSCL Thetis
,” she read aloud, “sank off the coast of Malaysia… three fatalities reported… the cargo consisted of food, farm equipment and electronics.”

“Like they really know what was on that ship.” Durant tugged on his seatbelt as the van veered. “Wasn’t it just a bunch of miscellaneous containers?”

“I suppose someone looked at the manifests.”

Durant craned his neck over Emily’s shoulder to see what she was reading. “It says there that it sailed under an Indonesian flag. What makes you think it’s Chinese?”

“Because CSCL is the Chinese Shipping Company. It makes no difference where they registered it. It’s a Chinese ship with a Chinese crew.”

“As far as we’re concerned, the blowback is the same,” Perry added.

“Let’s walk in from here,” Emily said, when she saw the line of shuttles stacked up at the security gate. She pulled the sliding door open, and the driver hit the brakes.

“You know they hate it when you pull stunts like this. The line at the gate won’t go any faster just because we’re on foot.”

“But we don’t have to be stuck at the end of it. Just flash that shiny, gold ‘Budweiser’ you’re so proud of and they’ll speed us through quickly enough.”

The only thing more irritating than her gentle mockery was the pleasure Durant took in it. Of course, it didn’t feel any better when she turned out to be right. In the minute or three it took to cover the hundred yards from the gate to the gangway leading up to the
Bonhomme Richard
, Theo came running up to them waving what looked like a sat-phone, which he pushed into Emily’s hands.

“The Admiral wants us on the
Blue Ridge
.” He placed one hand on Perry’s shoulder to pull him away from the gangway and the others. Turning to Emily he said, “That’s your mom on the other end. Michael arranged it. Ditch the phone when you’re done. Don’t bring it onboard.”

“And, like, what about me?” Durant said, with an exaggerated moan. “You guys are all ditching me, too?”

Perry glanced back over his shoulder as Theo tugged in the other direction. Emily waved Durant off and stalked over to the edge of the dock, phone clamped to the side of her head and a hand cupped over the other ear.

“What’s the rush?” Perry asked.

“The Admiral’s arranged a conference-call and we need to be there. Given the situation, he’s stepping in as CWC.”

“Whoa,” Perry said. “Does that mean he’s moving over to the
BHR
for the rest of the mission?”

“I don’t think so. At least, he doesn’t appear to be getting ready for a move.”

“Then the
Blue Ridge
is gonna do more than just shadow us, I guess.” Perry glanced back at Emily again, now standing at the edge of the dock, silhouetted against the distant, looming shape of Mt. Kokuzo, on the other side of Sasebo Bay.

“Don’t worry. It’s gonna take at least another eight hours before they can get underway, and even if this takes longer, they’ll just fly us over on an SH-60.”

Perry shrugged Theo’s reassurances off. “What’s her mom want? Did Michael say?”

“
W
hat is it
, Mom? This phone can’t be secure. I don’t care what Michael says.”

“It’s secure enough for this, Chi-chan.”

“You’re scaring me a little. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Theo called with the news, and after Li Li and Stone saw it on the TV… well, the kids were frightened. I think they need to hear your voice.”

“You told ’em it wasn’t my ship, right?”

“Yes, yes, don’t worry. But I don’t think they realized… at least Stone didn’t…”

“Are you okay, Mom?” Emily paused to consider the sound of her mother’s breathing, or perhaps it was just the hiss of digital static. “Because there’s like fifteen hundred Marines on board to keep me safe, not to mention a couple of SEALs… and CJ and Zaki. I’m among friends.”

“I know, sweetheart. It’s just…”

“I’ll be careful. I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too, Chi-chan.”

“Now how about you let the kids have a chance.”

“One more thing. Michael has a message for you.”

“Not on this line, Mom. It’s not…”

“I know. Theo will know what it is. Just ask him about the conference call, about whatever it was that O’Brien thinks is more of Michael’s paranoia.”

Even though she was almost a teenager, Li Li still didn’t quite feel comfortable speaking on the phone. Emily listened for her voice on the other end, tried to detect the sound of her breath, her heart. “Are you there, sweetheart?”

“Emmy, I’m here,” she said, after a moment.

“It’s so good to hear your voice, my big girl. Is Stone there, too?”

“Yes, he’s here.” The tone of Li Li’s voice had changed slightly, revealing a touch of sibling exasperation, and some excited clamoring and grunting echoed in the background.

“You’re on speaker,” Yuki said. “He can hear you loud and clear.”

“I’m here, too,” Andie said.

“Why don’t we clear out and let them have her all to themselves?” Yuki said.

“Okay… stay safe, Emily. We all miss you.”

After the fussiness of long-distance farewells died down, Li Li began to sound more confident on the phone. “He never stops, Emmy.”

“Stone,” she said, “you need to take good care of your sister, and that means letting her have some alone time.”

“…and not always making me watch whatever he wants to watch on TV,” Li Li added.

“I love you, my sweet boy,” Emily cooed at him, trying to overcome the difficulty of communicating over a telephone with someone who doesn’t speak. He’d been mute since the day she’d found him, hiding behind a cabinet in a secret North Korean compound in Kamchatka. All the love in the world, and the occasional visit to various medical specialists and speech therapists, had done nothing for his condition, whatever its origin was. The doctors were stumped, though Emily knew well enough what was behind it all.

“He hears you,” Li Li finally answered for him. “When will you be home?”

“Not for a long time, I’m afraid… maybe a year. Can you get along without me?”

“Do I have a choice?” She must have glanced at Stone, because she offered a quick emendation: “Do
we
have a choice?”

Of course, they didn’t, but Emily began to consider alternatives. Could she fly them to Japan before school started again in the fall? Was it worth the risk of exposing the two of them to the vagaries of Border Control? Michael had crafted Stone’s papers so that no one would raise an eyebrow – but was it really worth testing unnecessarily?

Ending the call was almost impossible, and fortunately various inquiries about friends, chores, and camping trips helped stave off the inevitable. But eventually, all good things… if only she could avoid making any promises she couldn’t keep.

“The summer will pass, and then you’ll be back in school with your friends, and I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Will you be here for Christmas, at least?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t know yet.” Even as she said this, the resolve was beginning to form in her heart that Christmas was already too long to wait. “I’ll try. Kiss Stone for me, and Yuki and Andie.”

Once the line had gone dead, she smashed the phone on a piling and kicked the pieces into the bay, and let her eyes rest one more time on the dark outline of Mt. Kokuzo… and the sliver-moon that hung just above the horizon, a few minutes from the evening star, which it seemed to want to devour.

“Protect.” That’s the word she heard in her heart. But protect whom? The voice sounded new to her – not the shrill tones of her great-great-grandmother,
Amaterasu-omikami
, the goddess of the sun, that had so terrified her in adolescence. This voice sounded more like an ally, even a friend, perhaps a cousin, though of what extraction she could hardly guess.

“Protect.”

She turned to walk back to the
Bonhomme Richard’s
gangway. “Once more into the breach…”

“
W
hat do
we know about this ship?” Mr. Saito asked, as soon as the roar of the engines died down and the plane had levelled off. With no one else seated in the tiny, first-class cabin, he must have deemed it safe to have a sensitive conversation.

“Probably just pirates,” Gyoshin said. Of course, he wanted to know what impact the sinking might have on public opinion, and specifically what the cost might be of his efforts to persuade the Prime Minister to re-militarize the nation.

Even though he came from one of the most ancient families, at least as ancient as her own, they hadn’t included him in ‘the plan’. In fact, the Sogas had wanted to have him killed. Just another bureaucrat, one of many who had traded family dignity for a government sinecure, Gyoshin could practically smell Jin-san’s resentment of his ilk, the sort of people who traded their own family history cheaply, and preserved no memory of what hers had once been.

That day was still etched in her mind, sitting with Jin-san on a lonely bench in the
Meiji Jingu
, a sprawling oasis of solitude in the midst of one of the busiest shopping districts in Tokyo. Like Roman
triumvirs
, or
duumvirs
in this case, they’d traded names back and forth on their respective lists, people whose contributions the nation no longer needed – her list had been dictated by
Ojii-san
, but she suspected that Jin-san’s might have been at least partly her own.

“Saito-san may still prove useful,” she’d said at the time, though she cared less about his support for a program necessary to ‘the plan’, than for his lax supervision of her expense account, ever alert to the danger of letting Jin-san know exactly how impoverished she really was.

“There are more reliable men cowering under every third cabbage leaf,” Jin-san had said.

“Maybe so, but this one is already in place, and a known quantity.”

Jin-san relented, as Gyoshin knew she would – how else could she preserve the air of noble indifference? The thought that she’d preserved his life, however insignificant he might really be, gave her some little bit of satisfaction as she sat next to him now, the plane banking sharply left. She’d persuaded him to take a connecting flight through Yonago, so she could get home early. Better that than endure another trip in the Soga’s jet, and Jin-san’s disingenuous solicitude.

“We already know it can’t be pirates,” Mr. Saito said. “Not that far north of the strait. What do we know about the CSCL?”

“The Board of Directors reads like a who’s-who of the Chinese Central Committee,” she said, merely relaying information she’d gleaned from something Minoru-san had said to Jin-san. This was another one of those moments, that had become altogether too frequent in recent years, when corporate intell proved superior to what Defense could get on its own.

“Then it’s not likely their government is behind it.”

“Probably not… but they can be very… indirect,” she said, pausing to find a suitably delicate word. “I wouldn’t want to underestimate them.”

“If it’s really terrorists, they’ll try to use it as an excuse to accelerate their efforts to militarize the Spratly Islands.”

“That sounds about right.”

“In which case, public support for de-pacifying the constitution is sure to rise.”

Gyoshin could hardly suppress a smile at hearing these words – how little Mr. Saito understood the situation about to unfold all around him, speculating on his own prospects in a newly militarized Japan even as his deputy was preparing to transform the nation in ways he could scarcely imagine.

Old man Okamoto met her at the airport in the last functioning estate car, just as the sun began to turn the eastern horizon a pale blue. At least, she had no luggage to burden him with, a small consolation for hauling him out of bed this early.

“Hana-chan said you’d be here, Heiji-san. Is anything wrong?”

“Yes… and no, Okamoto-san. Thank you for taking this trouble.”