The Fifth Profession (36 page)

“No! Why can't I make you understand? I love you!” Savage was speechless.

“And I'm not leaving you,” she said. “The odds are I'd never see you again. So I'll ask it one more time—if we manage to get away from here, what do we do after that? How do we … ? I just thought of something. Suppose Mac was right. Suppose you did belong to the CIA. Can't
they
help us?”

Savage shook his head. “If it's true that I am involved with the agency, I've got no way to get in touch. I don't know who my contacts are supposed to be. I don't know where or how to leave a written message for them or what number to phone. I can't just call the agency's headquarters in Langley and tell the switchboard operator that I'm wanted for several murders and it's possible I work for the government and this is the name I was told I used to have and would someone please help me out. Whoever I spoke to would figure I was nuts. Even if the agency knew who I was, it would have to deny ever having heard of me. Hell, now that I think about it, everything's so twisted around, someone in the agency might be behind all this. No,” he insisted, “we're on our own.”

“The network program is coming back on,” Akira said.

Savage spun toward the television. Joan Lunden beamed. She and her cohost chorused, “Good morning, America!” Sean Connery would join them in this half hour, along with Tony Bennett and his paintings, a special report on high school athletic injuries, and a controversy about whether trickor-treating on Halloween amounted to devil worship. But first the news.

A devastating hurricane in Central America. A massive defense-contract scandal. A skyscraper fire in New York City.

Savage checked his watch. “Their news segment lasts five minutes. Just another minute to go. It looks like the killings aren't being treated as national news.”

“Thank God,” Rachel said. “If we can get farther down the seaboard, to South Carolina or even Georgia …”

“Yes,” Savage said. “The police down there might not be looking for us as hard.”

Akira abruptly pointed toward the television. His brown skin seemed to turn pale. He spoke in Japanese—a sharp, quick outburst of surprise and shock.

When Savage saw what Akira was pointing at, his body went cold. His heartbeat skipped several times, making him fear he'd pass out. He slumped onto a chair, all the while continuing to stare at the nightmare on the television screen.

The story was from Tokyo. It showed a Japanese diplomat inciting thousands of Japanese students, who angrily chanted anti-American slogans, holding up anti-American placards outside the U.S. embassy. The diplomat was in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair and haggard features; of moderate height, slightly overweight. His name was Kunio Shirai, the announcer said. Despite Shirai's traditional businessman's appearance, he was the radical leader of an anti-American faction, the power of which was growing so fast that it threatened to splinter Japan's main political group, the Liberal Democratic Party. What made the story so unusual wasn't the ferocity of the students, who periodically demonstrated with equal ferocity about other causes, though it had to be admitted that they hadn't shown such outrage since the seventies. Instead the story was unique because Japanese politicians were traditionally models of decorum in public, impassive, composed. In mustering hostility toward America, Kunio Shirai was behaving more like an American than a Japanese.

A moment later, Joan Lunden introduced the program's weatherman, who pointed at lines and arrows on a map.

As if hypnotized, Savage and Akira kept staring at the screen.

“What is it?” Rachel asked.

“Kunio Shirai,” Savage said.

“But that's not his name.” Akira breathed.

“Or at least not the name we were given.” Savage turned to Rachel. “Muto Kamichi.
That's
his name. The Medford Gap Mountain Retreat. The man we were hired to protect. The man we saw cut in half.”

“We
survived, though we saw each other die,” Akira said. “But I never doubted that
Kamichi
died. It never occurred to me. In my nightmares, I still see the sword slice through him.”

“And the halves of his body fall. And the blood. So much blood.”

Akira's features hardened. “We know what to do now.”

“Yes,” Savage growled. “And where to go.”

“I don't understand,” Rachel said.

“Japan.”

THREE

THE LAND OF THE GODS

ARTS OF PEACE AND WAR

1

Savage drove from the motel, hoping no one had seen them get into the car.

Again Akira hid on the floor in back, though Rachel sat next to Savage, her auburn hair making it safe for her to show herself. She studied a road map. “The nearest major airport is in Raleigh. That's a hundred and fifty miles west.”

“No, Raleigh won't do,” Savage said. “There'd be so few Japanese flying out of that airport—probably none— Akira would be sure to attract attention.” Reaching a highway, he headed northwest. “Will this route take us around Virginia Beach?”

Rachel checked the map. “No problem. But where are we going?”

“Washington. Dulles International Airport. We can count on a lot of Japanese flying in and out of there. Akira won't be noticed.”

A few miles later, Savage pulled into a truckstop. He took care to park well away from other vehicles so no one could see into the back of the Taurus. Referring to the directory in a pay phone's booth, he called the toll-free numbers for several airlines. Though it would have been easier to phone from the motel, he didn't want to leave a record of his calls.

“We're in luck,” he said, getting back in the car. “I managed to get three seats on an American Airlines flight.”

“What time does it leave?” Akira asked.

“Tomorrow morning. Ten to eight.”

“But Dulles Airport must be—”

“Four hundred miles away, given the roundabout route we're forced to take to avoid the eastern part of Virginia,” Savage said. “The airport's security inspection takes longer on an overseas flight. All our luggage is carry-on. That'll save time. Even so, to pick up our tickets and guarantee we're on the plane, we need to be at the airport by five
A.M.
at the latest.”

“Can we do that?” Rachel asked.

Savage glanced at his watch. “Twenty-one hours to drive four hundred miles? Sure. Even if traffic's bad, we'll be in Washington tonight.”

Despite his confident tone, Savage reflexively increased speed. At once he thought better and strictly obeyed the limit. They didn't dare get stopped by a traffic cop. “There's plenty of time.”

“Then we should use it,” Akira said. “You have much to learn.”

“What about?” Savage asked.

“I gather that neither of you has been to Japan.”

Savage and Rachel agreed.

“Yes,” Akira said. “You have much to learn.”

“I've read books about Japan,” Savage said.

“But I can't assume that the books were accurate or that you retain the essentials,” Akira said. “And Rachel apparently knows almost nothing about Japan.”

“True,” Rachel said.

“You must be prepared. Soon you will enter a culture completely alien to you. Behavior you take for granted might be interpreted as rudeness. And what you think of as an insult might be a sign of respect. In the West, I've taught myself to behave as a Westerner, to adjust to your values, to accept your ways of thinking. Perhaps, then, you've concluded that the only differences between Americans and Japanese are the food we prefer to eat and the color of our skin, not to mention our language. The differences are much greater. Profound. If you are to survive the dangers we face, you must learn
my
ways just as I learned yours. Or try to learn—because I don't have much time to teach you.”

2

The 747 cruised over the glinting Pacific at forty thousand feet. As Savage assessed everything Akira had told him, he wished there'd been a chance for Akira to continue explaining during the long flight. There was so much to know, to absorb. But the only seats available had been widely separated, in three different sections of the plane, and Savage couldn't even see Akira, let alone talk with him.

Not only Akira but Rachel.

Savage felt nervously isolated from her. His instincts as a protector made him squirm at being distanced from his principal. More, despite his professional's need to be objective about a client, he reluctantly admitted that another need had grown within him. Accustomed to fearing for others, he'd never feared for his own safety—till now. Suffering a nightmare in which the dead came back to life, how could he be sure of anything? How could he trust his sense of reality? He had to depend on
something.
Love gave him hope.

He glanced out his window. Below, for many hours, there'd been nothing but ocean, and he understood why Akira had said that east of Japan there was only west. It was obvious why Japan identified so strongly with the sun. In ancient times, the blazing globe that seemed to rise each day from the infinite expanse of the sea must have exerted a powerful force. The land of the rising sun. The symbol on the nation's flag. As Akira had said, “Japan is the only country whose tradition maintains its citizens are descendants of gods. One deity in particular. Amaterasu. The goddess of the sun.”

Savage felt pressure on his ears and didn't need the pilot's announcement to make him aware that the jet had begun to descend. He opened his mouth wide, hearing a pop behind his eardrums, and leaned close to the window. The sky was cloudless, except for a haze along the horizon. As the 747 continued its gradual descent, he saw a coastline amid the haze. He noticed specks of ships on the ocean and, fifteen minutes later, saw buildings crammed along the shore.

“Japan has a population of one hundred and twenty-five million,” Akira had said. “That makes it the sixth most populous nation in the world. Its combined square miles make it equivalent in mass to your state of Montana, but threefourths of the country is mountainous and most of my people are forced to live along the coast, so the actual usable living space for those one hundred and twenty-five million people is smaller than your state of Connecticut.”

The jet sped lower, closer. Staring at the congested buildings along the enlarging shore, Savage marveled. More than three hundred years ago, Akira had explained, the Japanese had decided to solve the problem of overcrowding by extending their boundaries. Using massive landfill projects, they'd expanded the coast, a process that still continued with the result that more than forty percent of the shore, including part of Tokyo, was land claimed from the sea.

The haze toward which the jet descended wasn't mist or low clouds but smog, Savage realized. Despite it, he managed to see the vague shapes of the rugged inland mountains and the overwhelming sprawl of cities merging with cities. He couldn't ignore the irony: a people renowned for savoring nature lived among urban blight. Narita International Airport toward which the jet descended provided a good example.

In 1966 when Japan's rapid economic development had necessitated a new and larger international airport, the Japanese government had chosen a site on irreplaceable farmland east of Tokyo. Instead of negotiating with the reluctant farmers, the government had annexed the land for an unfair price. The farmers demonstrated angrily, as did farmers on nearby land whose tranquillity would be destroyed by the roar of jets. Students and antigovernment groups joined in the protests, producing such chaos that after Narita Airport was completed it couldn't be opened for seven years. Still the protests continued. Numerous bombings and armed assaults injured more than eight thousand and killed at least thirteen. For their safety, visiting heads of state had been compelled to land at the old Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Even now, Savage noted as the 747 landed, police patrolled the steel barricades, watchtowers, and several rows of tall fences around Narita. He saw water cannons and armored vehicles. Beyond, more buildings were being constructed, further despoiling what once had been idyllic countryside. Progress.

After the seventeen-hour flight, Savage's legs ached. The local time was 4:05
P.M
., but his body clock told him it was one in the morning. Bumped and jostled by the swarm of departing passengers, he left the aircraft, exhausted. Akira and Rachel—both looking haggard—waited for him in the concourse, and before Savage realized what he was doing, he embraced her.

“God, I'm tired,” she said. “I feel like I've gained ten pounds. Every time I fell asleep, they woke me for another meal.”

Akira smiled, though his eyes remained sad. “Immigration and customs are this way.”

The process was lengthy but uneventful. At last proceeding through the noisy, crowded terminal toward an exit, Savage felt more and more self-conscious. Surrounded by thousands of Japanese, he'd never felt so out of place, so awkwardly aware of being Caucasian. His skin seemed unnaturally pale, his body too large, his movements clumsy. Though the Japanese were fascinated by his appearance, they also seemed repelled, doing their best not to let their shoulders touch him. Does Akira feel this self-conscious in the West, surrounded by Caucasians? he wondered.

“I'll arrange for a taxi,” Akira said.

“Then where will we be going?” Rachel asked.

For a moment, pride replaced the sadness in Akira's eyes. “The most special place in the world.”

3

The leather-coated taxi driver steered this way and that through a maze of narrow, traffic-jammed streets in northern Tokyo. The noise and commotion were awesome, even for someone accustomed to New York City. Exhaust fumes flared Savage's nostrils. During the forty-minute drive into the city, he'd noted the cultural schizophrenia of the buildings along the highway: Western-style hotels and office buildings adjacent to temples and cherry orchards. But within the city, Western architecture dominated: skyscrapers, shopping centers, apartment buildings that looked like concrete capsules stacked on top of each other, a steel-girder spire that resembled the Eiffel Tower.

“During the final months of the Great East Asian War” —Akira corrected himself—’ ‘what you call World War Two, American aerial cluster-bomb attacks and the consequent fire storms left most of Tokyo in ruins. Almost one hundred thousand civilians were killed. The chaos was so severe, the necessity to rebuild so urgent, that no one had time to reconstruct the city in an orderly fashion. Survival mattered, not logic. Tokyo's baffling labyrinth of streets is the legacy. Instead of traditional architecture, Western architecture became the norm, the influence of America's seven year military occupation here after the war.”