The Fifth Profession

“But saw cut in half at the nonexistent Medford Gap Mountain Retreat.” The veins in Akira's temples throbbed. “Madness.” His eyes blazed. “I knew I had only one option-to seek safety with my mentor.” He glanced toward Taro. “I didn't dare return to my home. But I couldn't ignore my responsibility to Eko. On the chance that she'd come back from being with Churi at the morgue and arranging his funeral, I used the phone in the bar to call my home and felt startled when she answered ‘hai,’ the warning signal to run. I quickly asked her, ‘Why?’ ‘Strangers,’ she blurted. ‘Gaijin. Guns.’ Someone yanked the phone from her hand. An American spoke Japanese. ‘We want to help you,’ he said. ‘Come back.’ I slammed down the phone before they could trace the call. Americans with guns? In my home? And they claim they want to help? Not likely! The police would have posted guards to restrict reporters from the crime scene. How did Americans get inside?” Akira glared, his emotions finally showing. “If I could get to Eko and rescue her…”

“We called her as well,” Savage said. “At eleven tonight. She gave us the warning signal before an American grabbed the phone. They need her. They'll question her, but she knows nothing. They'll scare her, but she's valuable as a hostage. I don't think they'll hurt her.”

“ ‘Don't think’ isn't good enough,” Akira snapped. “She's like a mother to me!”

Taro raised his wrinkled hands, motioning for silence. He spoke to Akira in Japanese.

Akira responded. His melancholy tinged with relief, eyes bright, he turned to Savage. “My sensei has vowed to rescue her. His most advanced students will leave a few weeks early. Tonight will be their graduation. And Eko's release.”

I bet, Savage thought. Those guys upstairs looked as if there wasn't any obstacle they couldn't overcome. Whoever's in Akira's house, they won't know what hit them.

Savage bowed to Taro. “For my friend, I thank you.”

Taro frowned. “You call Akira a friend?”

“We've been through a lot together.”

“But the friendship is impossible,” Taro said.

“Why? Because I'm a gaijin? Call it respect. I like this man.”

Taro smiled enigmatically. “And I, as you put it, like you. But we will never be friends.”

“Your loss.” Savage shrugged.

Taro raised his head in confusion.

Akira interrupted, speaking solemnly to Taro.

Taro nodded. “Yes. An irreverent attempt to be humorous. So American. Amusing. But another reason that we'll never be friends.”

“Then let's put it this way. I'm a fellow protector. A good one. And I ask for professional courtesy.” Savage didn't give Taro a chance to react. Pivoting quickly toward Akira, he asked, “And then you came here?”

“Where I waited in case my enemies arrived. I couldn't imagine why you hadn't gone to the restaurant as we agreed. I feared that you still wouldn't be there when I called again in the morning.”

“Just as we feared for you after Eko gave us the warning signal.”

“What happened?“

Savage focused his thoughts, trying as best he could to restrain emotion, to summarize objectively what they'd been through: the chase at the Meiji Shrine, the escape from the gardens, the attack on the street.

“But we don't know if Hailey's men were in the van or if they shot at the van.” Rachel's voice dropped, plummeting toward despair. “More questions. The answers keep getting farther away.”

“And maybe that's the point,” Akira said. “To keep us confused. Off balance.”

“The obstacle race and the scavenger hunt,” Savage said.

Akira looked puzzled.

“That was Graham's view of life. It fits. While we search, we try to elude whoever wants to stop us.”

“But we don't know which group is which,” Akira said. He repeated a word he'd used earlier: “Madness.”

“I may be able to help you,” Taro said. “With regard to Kunio Shirai.”

It took a moment before Savage registered what Taro had said. Chest contracting, he stared in surprise at the deceptively frail old man.

“Before I explain, I sense,” he told Savage, “that you need to be assured. I have no acquaintance with the name by which you knew him… or falsely remember that you knew him… in America. Jamais vu, I believe you call it.”

Savage frowned. Straightened. Tensed.

“No need to be alarmed. My excellent student”-Taro gestured toward Akira-”earlier described to me the impossible events at the nonexistent Mountain Retreat. You saw each other die. You saw a man called Muto Kamichi, whom you've learned to call Kunio Shirai, cut in half. But none of it happened. Jamais vu. Indeed. As good a description as any. I'm a Buddhist. I believe that the world is illusory. But I also believe that earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanic eruptions are real. So I force myself to distinguish between illusion and truth. Kunio Shirai is real. But at no time did I arrange for my excellent student to accompany him-under any name-to America. I've never met the man. I've never dealt with him through intermediaries. I beg you to accept my word on this.”

Savage squinted, felt his shoulders relax, and nodded. Trapped in a sickening, wavering assault on his consciousness, he repeated to himself Rachel's favorite quotation. Abraham believed by virtue of the absurd.

“Very well,” Taro said and turned to Akira. “A great deal has happened in the six months since I last saw you. In Japan. Or at least in the undercurrents of Japan.” The old man's eyes changed, their pupils expanding, as if he concentrated on an object far away. “In secret, a small force has been gaining power. Even longer ago than six months. It began in January of nineteen eighty-nine. With the death of our esteemed emperor, Hirohito, and with the forbidden Shinto rites involved in his funeral.”

Savage felt Rachel flinch beside him and recalled their conversation in the Ginza district about this same subject.

Taro's eyes abruptly contracted as he shifted his attention from the imaginary distant object and steadied them, laserlike, on Savage. “Religion and politics. The postwar constitution demanded their separation, insisting that never again would God's will be used to control this nation's government. But words on a document imposed by a gaijin victor don't cancel tradition or suppress a nation's soul. In private, the old ways are bound to persist. In pockets. Among absolute patriots, one of whom is Kunio Shirai. His ancestors descend from the zenith of Japanese culture, the begi