The Ends of the Earth (38 page)

‘You’re not going to try to talk me out of it again, Malory?’ Max asked.

‘What would be the point?’

‘None, of course.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘The
Woodward
will be setting sail around about now.’

‘Taking Schools to safety. And tomorrow the
Ptarmigan
will take Sam and me to safety as well. I know. We’re leaving. But you’re staying.’

‘Not for long.’

‘One way or another?’

‘Tell Chiyoko I won’t put her brother’s life at risk, would you? I don’t want her to worry about that after all she’s done for us.’

‘You don’t want anyone to worry, Max. Isn’t that right? You don’t want them to, but they will. What you’re doing is suicidal and you know it. Chances are we’ll never—’

‘Don’t say that.’ Max pressed his fingers against Malory’s lips, silencing her. ‘Just wish me luck. That’s all I need.’ He lifted his hand away then, freeing her to speak.

She looked at him for a long time, then shook her head sadly. ‘You’re impossible, Max. Of course I wish you luck. All the luck in the world. But it’s not enough, is it?’

He smiled softly. ‘It is for me.’

She turned away. ‘I’m trying very hard not to cry,’ she said, her voice thick with the effort.

‘By the time I was shot down, in April of seventeen, Malory, the life expectancy of a fighter pilot on the Western Front could be measured in weeks. Ask Sam. He never expected to see me again every time I took off. Yet here I am. I beat the odds. And I’ll go on beating them. I promise.’

‘Sam’s waving to you.’ Malory pointed towards the seaplane. Sam and his helper were standing on the floats, with the tanks hoisted into position. It seemed Max’s approval of something was required.

‘I’d better go.’

Max set off without waiting for another word from Malory. She watched him stride away. ‘Yes, of course,’ she murmured to herself – and, in a sense, to him. ‘You have to go.’

Max was right about the SS
Woodward
. At that moment, the last of her ropes was falling away as she cleared the pier-side in Yokohama and moved out into the harbour. Watching her leave was Commissioner Fujisaki, standing impassively among the onlookers. He raised a hand in muted farewell to Schools Morahan, who responded in kind from one of the open midship decks.

Schools was leaning on a walking stick, supplied to him before he left the hospital. He was not happy to need one and did not look it. He was not happy about any of the circumstances of his departure from Japan, in fact, but he and Fujisaki both knew going quietly was the only choice open to him.

Ward and Djabsu had already gone in search of a drink – more likely several drinks – to celebrate their release from prison.

Schools had undertaken to join them later, though he was not sure he would when it came to it. His mind dwelt fretfully on what might be happening in Kyoto. Max had promised to protect Malory, but Max was not master of his own destiny, far less Malory’s. The future could not be predicted, only hoped for. And there would be no news, good or bad, during the three-week voyage to San Francisco. Limbo was all Schools had to look forward to.

That and the day he regained enough mobility to toss his Japanese walking stick into the Pacific Ocean. Summoning a smile in anticipation of the moment, he moved as adroitly as he could away from the rail. And left the view of Yokohama behind him.

After leaving the boatyard, Max drove Sam, Malory and Chiyoko to Ohtsu station. From there Chiyoko was to catch a train to Tokyo via Nagoya, Malory and Sam a train to Kobe. No one would be looking for them at Ohtsu, whereas Tomura might conceivably have set a watch on the station at Kyoto. He must know by now Max had not been caught in the trap set for him at the Dragonfly’s villa.

The time had come for brisk goodbyes and summonings of false optimism. Max thanked Chiyoko for her help and assured Malory and Sam he would meet them in Shanghai.

He saw the truth in their faces, though – the fear, if not the conviction, that there would be no meeting in Shanghai; that this time he would not win through. He saw it. But he pretended not to. And they joined him in the pretence.

Final farewells were exchanged. And then he drove away.

MAX DID NOT
return to Seifu-so, reckoning it possible Tomura would soon have Saionji’s villa watched. Nor did he want there to be any possibility of becoming entangled with the police. Before leaving Shanghai, he had bought plenty of ammunition for his gun and a bandoleer to carry it in, together with a knife. Even then, he had foreseen a moment such as this would arrive. He could not turn away from it. And he did not intend to try.

He would not have chosen such a public place as the railway station to collect Junzaburo if he had thought Tomura might learn he was in Kyoto. Accordingly, he drove to Minami Hongan-ji, arriving more than half an hour before the time of their rendezvous, parked near the gate of the temple and waited for Junzaburo to emerge.

Passers-by in that part of the city late on a hot afternoon were few. Max smoked a couple of cigarettes to ward off gnats from the nearby rice-fields. He was not surprised by how calm he felt, how undismayed by what lay before him. He had discovered his aptitude for taking risks early in the war. ‘You should be more careful, sir,’ Sam had said to him more than once. And Max had always given the same reply. ‘Being careful is what gets a chap killed.’ Eventually, he had come to believe that. And it was a belief that had served him well. So far.

‘You have changed the plan,’ said Junzaburo, making Max jump by his sudden, soft-footed arrival from somewhere other than the main gate of the temple.

Max turned round to face him and was surprised by what he saw. The orange robe was gone. Junzaburo was clad in a dark green hooded tunic and loose trousers. He was wearing a conical straw hat and had a well-filled rope-handled bag slung on one shoulder.

‘Why are you not waiting at the station, Max?’

‘Get in. I’ll explain on the way.’

Junzaburo climbed in and they set off. Max went back the way he had come, under the railway line, then headed north on the western side of the city.

‘Where is your friend?’ Junzaburo asked, when the promised explanation did not promptly follow.

‘He’s dead,’ said Max.

Junzaburo did not respond at first. Then he nodded, as if the news confirmed some prognostication of his. ‘I am sorry,’ he said.

‘I don’t have the model either.’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘No. It was destroyed by a man who lives – lived – with the Dragonfly.’

‘Is he dead also?’

‘Yes. As is the Dragonfly. He killed her.’

‘And you killed him?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Perhaps not. But the Dragonfly is gone?’

‘Yes.’

‘All the advantages you thought you would have – the model of
Uchi-gawa
, the gifted companion – are lost to you?’

‘They are.’

‘Then it is hopeless.’

‘That’s for me to decide.’

‘
Hai, hai.
Yes. For you to decide.’

Silence yawned between them as the Apperson growled on through the arrow-straight intersections of Kyoto’s dusty streets, past cyclists and carts and slower-moving cars and vans.

‘They say Kyoto is laid out like a Go board,’ said Junzaburo suddenly. ‘The representation is not perfect, of course. You know the game of Go, Max?’

‘Something like chess?’

‘Nothing like chess. There are no moves. The players place their stones on the intersections of the lines on the board. There are three hundred and sixty-one intersections. The game is won by building territory and surrounding and capturing the enemy’s stones.’

‘What are you telling me, Junzaburo? That I’m surrounded?’

‘You already know that.’

‘Then what?’

‘The game ends when all the stones have been played, even if it is obvious who has won long before the last stone is played. And often it is obvious. As it is for you.’

‘Lucky for me I’m not a Go player, then.’

‘Do not finish the game, Max. Walk away from the board.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Then you are wrong. You are a Go player. And you will lose the match.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Does Tomura know what you mean to do?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Is he at the castle?’

‘Probably.’

‘You have nothing in your favour.’

Max glanced at Junzaburo then and smiled. ‘I have you.’

‘Not enough.’

‘And I have the nerve, which Tomura may think I lack, to go through with this.’

‘Still not enough.’

‘You promised to get me in there.’

‘And I will.’

‘Then don’t worry. I won’t complain later I wasn’t warned.’

Silence fell again between them. It was obvious what Junzaburo was thinking. For Max, he did not believe there would be a later.

The car climbed into the hills as the sun slipped towards the horizon. The green of the cedar-cloaked peaks deepened in the mellowing light. The shadows lengthened. The only words spoken by Junzaburo for the next hour were simple instructions. ‘Go on.’ ‘Turn here.’ ‘It is not far.’

They stopped on a saddle of land between two narrow valleys, with rugged slopes above them, where clumps of trees clung to the earth between aprons of scree. The road had become little more than a track. They pushed the car off it into the cover of some bushes, cutting several long branches to lay across it for extra camouflage. Then they started to climb, up through the ramrod-straight cedars and the loose scree, where Max several times lost his footing, but Junzaburo looked as assured as a mountain goat in his simple leather moccasins.

It grew chill as evening encroached, Max’s breath clouding around him as he struggled up the pathways that Junzaburo’s eye alone detected. The light thinned and grew misty, the hilltops around them dissolving in murk.

The entrance to the cave was concealed by a jumble of boulders, at the end of a gully invisible from below. ‘How did you first find this?’ Max panted as he caught up with Junzaburo, who was breathing as easily as if he had done no more than take a stroll in the park.

‘I was told of it by an old man who had served Tomura’s father. He saw something in me he liked. He said there might come a time when I would need to escape from Zangai-jo – from Tomura. He was right. But I did not need to use a tunnel. I became useless to Tomura. I cannot say now if I turned away from him or he turned away from me. I was … discarded.’ Junzaburo sighed. ‘As for the tunnel, this end is a natural cave, as you see. It is the same for much of its length. The rest was built as an escape route for the Tomuras if the castle ever fell. They have always had enemies. And they have always feared that one day their enemies would be stronger than them. But that day has never come.’

‘Yet.’

‘As you say, Max. Yet.’ Junzaburo moved towards the dark mouth of the cave, stooping to clear the low overhang of rock. ‘Follow me,’ he called back softly over his shoulder.

MAX HAD BROUGHT
a torch with him, but Junzaburo advised him to use one of the two torches he had brought instead. They comprised metal brackets fixed to wooden handles and wrapped in resin-soaked cloth, extra rolls of which Junzaburo carried in a bamboo cylinder fastened to his waist. They produced an impressive amount of light, casting a chaos of shadows ahead into the cave.

It was a slow, scrambling descent, along a twisting path of sorts between tumbled boulders. The roof grew lower, then higher, then lower again. Bats disturbed by the light swooped past them, sometimes brushing Max’s shoulder. Water dripped and trickled unseen through crevices in the rocks. The air was cold and damp, the echoes of their uneven footfalls dogging their progress.

No words were exchanged as the journey continued. Time compressed itself into the confines of the cave, measured only by their breaths and their stubborn, onward steps. Max began to consider once more the feasibility of what he was attempting. Could Matilda Tomura return this way with him? Could she even walk? Or might he have to carry her?

At length the descent ceased. The cave levelled out and closed in around them, funnelling towards its end. A wall of rock loomed ahead.

‘There is a way through,’ said Junzaburo. ‘See? To the right.’

What looked no more than a vertical crack in the rock revealed itself on closer inspection to be a narrow gap through which a man could squeeze sideways. And beyond?

‘That is where the tunnel begins.’

It was no easy matter to force themselves through, pulling their bags behind them. Only certainty of an onward route would have prompted anyone to persist.

On the other side was a low-roofed but solidly constructed tunnel of stone blocks, expertly worked. The air was dryer than in the cave, though if anything colder. The tunnel curved slightly ahead of them, with no end in sight.

‘We wait here till an hour before dawn,’ said Junzaburo. ‘You have food?’

At Chiyoko’s bidding, Umezu had supplied Max with some rice and bean-paste cakes. Max had them in his knapsack, along with a flask of water, woollen gloves and a comforter. Junzaburo had food too – rather more of it – and sake as well as water, enough for several tots each. He was also carrying a blanket, which he spread for them to sit on.

The torchlight revealed a column of Japanese characters carved in one of the stones forming the wall of the tunnel. Max asked Junzaburo what the inscription said.

‘It records the date of the completion of the tunnel. “Finished in the year of the death of Tokugawa Ieyasu.” He was the first Shogun. That means 1616 in the Western calendar. Three hundred and three years ago.’

‘Perfect craftsmanship,’ said Max, gazing up at the arched, interlocking stones, irregular in size but fitted together perfectly.

‘Nothing less would have been tolerated.’

‘Why is the castle called Zangai-jo?’

‘Eat your food. Soon we must put out the torches. There will be time to talk in the dark. More time than you could want.’

When the torches were extinguished, the darkness was total. There was no glimmer of light anywhere. There was no sound either, except when they shifted on the blanket or spoke. Whispering came naturally. There was no need to speak any more loudly than that.