Enzan. John Donohue
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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