On the Fifth Day (43 page)

But Thomas didn't stop. He got hold of her and spoke loudly into her face. "Don't mention the child-sized hole in your gut you've been carrying around for the last seven years?

Are you getting over that any time soon, Kumi?"

She hit him then, a sudden stinging slap across his face that brought silence to the temple garden. Then she fled, stumbling a dozen yards away, sobbing into her hands. Jim went after her, but slowly and keeping his distance. Parks stood for a mo

ment, frozen, his eyes wide, and then he drifted away by him

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self, leaving Thomas alone with his grief and his shame, as it had always been. The shadows of the four people that had blurred into an amorphous whole resolved and separated, drew on the gravel their stark, negative images of loss and iso

lation.

"You lost a child?" said Parks, turning to Thomas. He was whispering in a strange way and his eyes were still wide.

"No," said Thomas, hollow. "Yes. Anne. A late-term mis

carriage."

"Does that make a difference?" said Parks, looking toward Kumi. It was an accusation, bizarre coming from him, but an accusation nonetheless. Thomas was also watching her, but he was seeing only that day when they had sat in the parked car outside the obstetrician's clinic, crying together but already separate. Now he just shrugged like a man exhausted, and spoke the question he had nursed as long as she had.

"How do you mourn the loss of what you never had?"

CHAPTER 92

The temples in Japan had always left Thomas with a sense of calm and beauty, but if they were spiritual places it was a kind of spirituality he didn't really understand. He resented the church he had grown up in, but he understood it. Zenko-ji, Mi

nobu, and places like them were fascinating to him because they were otherworldly, exotic, but in them he always felt alone. If there was one thing he had always understood about Ed's religion it was the way it imagined a community, a living social world spreading out from the altar. Other people--

Japanese people--probably felt something like that here, but Thomas couldn't, and he was surprised to find that he wished he were in church, a church he knew and recognized, not as a tourist, but as someone born with it singing in his blood. 323

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They left the temple with barely a word. Kumi's face was still red, but she had wiped her tears away in a brisk, decisive fashion that said the subject was now closed. For a moment Jim took her hand, but though she thanked him for the gesture she permitted it for only a few seconds before releasing him and insisting that they begin the walk to the station in Kofu. Thomas drifted behind her, saying nothing, remembering the route past the net-covered vineyards, through the narrow, winding streets of garden walls, down to the old
onsen
baths, each curve in the road surprising him with its painful familiar

ity. Uniformed schoolkids cycled past as they always had, less interested in the foreigners than they once were, perhaps, but otherwise the same. He had lived here, even if he had never quite belonged here, and the way the place tugged at his mem

ory now made him feel old and lost and irrelevant. A more recent memory came back to him: Peter the Princi

pal giving him his marching orders.
"You've gone from mav

erick to pariah, Thomas--and I'll be honest here--I don't
really understand why."

"I know,"
he had said.
"I'm sorry."

And now he was back here, in his Japanese prehistory, wondering what the hell he was trying to achieve, these three mismatched people with him. Outside a corner store stood a pair of vending machines. One of them sold beer in oversized cans. Thomas walked toward it, fumbling in his pockets. An odd, rhythmic pounding drifted over the tiled roofs. Drums?

It sounded like it. He paused, straining to hear, and then walked quickly after the others, but it wasn't till they came to the edge of some dusty high school playing fields that the ex

tent of the thing became clear. He realized it in the same in

stant that Kumi turned to him, her eyes bright with the same knowledge, the same memory.

"It's the
Shingenko matsuri,
" she said. He nodded, his smile matching hers for its balance of joy and sadness.

"What the hell is that?" said Parks.

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"More prehistory," Thomas said.

The field was packed with people clustered in groups of twenty or more, all marshaled under glorious banners, all dressed or in the process of being dressed in the armor of samu

rai or their foot soldiers armed with bows, pikes, and
katana.
It was the annual celebration of Yamanashi's sixteenthcentury warlord and folk hero, Takeda Shingen. Today thou

sands would march in battalions around the major streets of Kofu: schoolchildren, company men, office workers, civil ser

vants, and half the population of the city--including a special regiment of foreigners--while the rest of the populace cheered them on. It was as interminable as it was spectacular and would go well into the night before Shingen's representa

tive would dismount from his horse and preside over the closing ceremonies. Thomas and Kumi had walked in the procession twice before, had cherished the silliness and grandeur of the thing so much that even now, with all that had been lost between them in the intervening years, the sight of it worked like nostal

gia on them.

"Can we stay and watch a while?" she said.

"Sure," said Thomas, drawing beside her.

"There isn't time," said Parks. "We have to get to the sta

tion and out of here."

"Just a few minutes," she said, and Thomas gave Parks a look so that he shrugged and walked away to wait for their moment to pass.

"It's pretty cool," said Jim, watching a samurai in black ar

mor laced with red and gold cord lead his ranks of armored troops out and into the streets.

"Yeah," said Thomas. "It is."

For ninety seconds they just watched.

"You ready now?" said Parks, tapping his watch.

"Kumi?' said Jim, leaning into her with immense gentle

ness, pretending not to see her tears.

She nodded once, and they began to walk once more.

* * *

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War thought the parade was a pain in the ass. The sleepy little town was suddenly teeming with people and the sidewalks were jammed with stalls selling all kinds of inedible shit. He had dispersed his team all over the major roads around the railway station because he was sure that was where Knight and the others would go, but it was a nightmare trying to make sure they didn't get past him in the crowds. He had to stop them here, and though he didn't especially want to start shoot

ing with all these people around, the procession might distract long enough for a few bleeding foreigners to be bundled into a van.

He checked in with the team leader, a man War had per

sonally recruited after his second tour with the Navy SEALs in Afghanistan.

"You in position?"

"Got the north side of the station covered, sir," he said.

"How are the crowds?"

"Not so bad up here. There's nothing to see."

"Keep your eyes open," said War. "And if you see them, call for the van before you start shooting unless it's absolutely necessary."

There was something odd about the man on the corner, odd enough to make Thomas stop in his tracks and press the others back into the alley. They were only a few blocks from the sta

tion now and the parade was close to its height in terms of noise and energy.

So why is that guy watching the crowd?

He was tall, athletic-looking, and vaguely Nordic, though the clothes were generic American and too warm by half for the mild weather. He looked serious, focused, dangerous.

"They're here," said Thomas, ducking back into the alley.

"Which one is it?" said Parks.

"Don't know," said Thomas. "Never seen him before."

"So how do you know . . . ?"

"I know," said Thomas. In the States the foreigner might 326

A. J. Hartley

have been a security guard keeping an eye on the crowd. Not here.

"We can't get past him," said Jim. "And there'll be others."

"What if we took a cab right up to the station?" said Kumi.

"The streets are blocked off," said Thomas. "We can't get there without being spotted."

"What if it's
not
them?" said Parks. "Just because you see a stray foreigner doesn't mean it's them. You've seen them. I've seen them. If this is someone different, maybe it's not them." He sounded more than insistent. He was getting des

perate. "I mean, how many can there be?"

"How the hell should I know?" said Thomas, not wanting to think about the scale of the organization that was bent on stopping or killing them.

"We've got to get on that train," said Parks.

"Wait," said Kumi, taking charge as she sometimes did when facing a crisis: her way of getting through it. "Come with me."

"You're sure they were on the train from Minobu?" said War into his headset. He was getting irritated now, because he was also getting anxious. He needed to call the Seal-breaker and tell him that all was in hand. That
they
were in hand. Or dead.

"Yes, sir," said the team leader. They were seen to get on, but my man on the platform in Kofu says they did not get off at this end."

"Could they have stayed on?"

"Unknown, sir."

"Unknown?" said War, petulance getting the better of him.

"What kind of answer is that?"

"Sorry, sir. It's unlikely but we can't be sure."

"Make sure," War snapped. "Get on that train and search it."

"Yes sir."

War went back to scanning the crowd. This ludicrous pa

rade was the problem; all these heathen idiots marching about in their golden-age crap. Any other day of the year the streets 327

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

would have been deserted and a gaggle of foreigners would have stood out like sore thumbs.

Every face was turned toward the parade except his. He was therefore the only one who didn't see the four partially armored people, three foreign men and a Japanese woman, break from the parade line as it skirted the steps at the entrance to the sta

tion only feet from where he was standing, watching the crowd. Kumi flagged down a schoolboy in the station, proffering a five-thousand-yen note and the bag of faux helmets that had been a good fifty percent of their disguise. By the time Thomas had collected their tickets, the kid was running back to the schoolyard's impromptu armory, grinning as if he had won the lottery.

CHAPTER 93

The Shizuoka train was faster than they had become used to, but it was still nothing like the Shinkansen. Parks complained constantly, sometimes even looking over his shoulder as if ex

pecting their pursuers to come barreling down the largely de

serted car. Thomas suspected he had other things on his mind, things as much concerned with where they were going as they were with where they had been.

"You think it's safe to use my cell phone?" Parks said. "I should really call ahead to make sure the boat is ready, but . . ."

He ended lamely and they all looked at each other. How easy was it to track a cell phone signal, or to listen in, and what kind of resources would their enemies need to be able to do such things? They had no idea.

"What do I look like," said Jim, "James Bond?"

Parks gave him a sharp look.

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"You look like a priest," he said.

"Thank you," said Jim, choosing to read the gibe as a com

pliment. In response Parks, looking cocky as if he were spoil

ing for a fight, turned to Kumi.

"Thought you weren't coming?" he said.

"I called the
ryokan
in Shimobe," she said.

"And?" said Parks.

"They were raided during the night," she answered. "Early morning, actually. Someone cut through the windows. Noth

ing was taken. It seemed like they were looking for something or someone."

"They?" said Thomas, wanting to hold on to a more in

nocuous sense of the event. "How do you know it wasn't just a local thief?"

"Professional breaking and entering in a Japanese moun

tain village?" she said. "No. And local thieves rarely drop from helicopters."

Thomas just looked at her.

"Good thing we spent the night in Minobu, huh?" she said.

"But it raises an interesting question," said Parks. "Because if they tracked us to a little
ryokan
in the middle of nowhere, I'd say they had help."

"Not necessarily," said Kumi with a sigh. "Hiding foreign

ers in rural Yamanashi is like hiding a 747 in the desert. You can bury it, but if someone spots it, they are going to notice and remember. And besides, Thomas has been on national television. They didn't need an informant."

"Maybe," said Parks, "but I thought we might ask the Rev

erend Jim, here."

"What's that supposed to mean?" said Jim.

"I'm just thinking aloud," said Parks.

"What kind of an informant would I be if I told them where we had stayed the
previous
night?" said Jim. He turned away and muttered "Jackass" under his breath so that everyone heard. Parks got up from his seat.

"Gotta pee," he said, looking at Jim.

Jim turned to stare fixedly out of the window, so that Kumi 329

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

and Thomas found themselves looking at each other directly for the first time since Zenko-ji. He gave her a quizzical look and nodded at the other two men, but she just shrugged and shook her head, half-closing her eyes.

"You're coming on the boat?" he asked.

"I need to call the office," she said. "I'll probably take the Shink up to Tokyo from Shizuoka."

"You didn't have to come," he said, resenting her still for sitting on the fence.