by Will Thomas
“No, I still wore my spectacles and maintained that I was Chinese. Only Miyoko knew. That was my wife, Miyoko. She cut off my hair after the Japanese fashion, and taught me the language. The local samurai tolerated a Chinaman in their midst because I had not cheated them on the rice and was willing to take up arms if necessary against the imperial government and because a typhoon had decimated their numbers. I supported their cause. The emperor was trying to usher in a new age on the dead bodies of the old one.”
“And did you fight?”
“Eventually. For eight months I was a simple farmer, cultivating a crop of radishes and catching fish with my young wife. I count it one of the best times of my life.”
“But they came.”
“Aye, they came, with their bayonet rifles and their cannons. We were a simple village of peasants and displaced samurai, still loyal to the old shogunate. The port town nearby was Goryokaku. Our village was called Nanaehama. There was a castle there that the samurais hoped to defend.”
Barker stopped and took a small mouthful of wine. He had no taste for it. He appeared to be looking off, far away, perhaps as far away as a remote village in Japan. I was losing him.
“What happened then?” I asked.
He was staring at a corner of the tablecloth, but there was no telling what he was actually seeing. I was about to repeat the question when he spoke.
“They came by sea. The Imperial Army had purchased an American ironclad and had brought French advisers to show them what needed to be done in order to storm the castle. I will not call it a massacre, but the castle was shelled to pieces and whoever was left inside was shot before they could even draw a sword. Let us call it a rout. Those left alive escaped into the countryside. They were pursued by imperial soldiers in their blue modern uniforms, armed with their rifles and bayonets. The first village they came to—”
“Was Nanaehama.”
“Hai.”
I don’t think he realized he had answered in Japanese.
“We had heard the shelling of the castle nearby, of course, and tried to prepare the best we could. I had brought two rifles and a box of shells, which probably made us the best prepared family on the entire island. I had trained Miyoko to shoot. We knew the end was coming. There would be a skirmish until we ran out of ammunition, and then we would both die in a hail of bullets. They had an unlimited supply of them. We would die as all the other rebels had died. My wife would die as the daughter of a samurai. I would die as an anonymous Chinaman who had arrived at the wrong place in the midst of a war and been stubborn enough to stay in order to defend a stupid little radish patch. But I loved that woman and that stupid little radish patch.” He paused for a moment. “I cannot talk about this anymore.”
Abruptly, he stood and left the room, his wine nearly full and his meal half eaten. He had been too agitated to even finish his meal. I felt sad that I had caused him pain, but it was necessary that I know, and perhaps necessary that he say it. Secrets can fester if not shared.
The next I knew, I was struck on the arm. Mac stood at my elbow.
“I say—”
“Idiot! Can you not allow a man his privacy?”
“No!” I snapped. “I’m in a dangerous position, being beaten and followed and I don’t even know whom I’m fighting or why. It’s not merely myself I’m worried about. Mrs. Ashleigh has tasked me with the promise to look after him. I can’t do that if I don’t even know what’s going on!”
“The Guv knows what he’s about,” Mac insisted.
“Does he? I’ve never seen him so emotional before. Normally, he prays and ponders before he acts. Now I feel as if he makes his decisions off the cuff. If he’s not going to take me into his confidence, or listen to my advice, what in hell am I here for? I’m not a bloody mushroom that thrives on being kept in the dark.”
It felt good to say it, even to Mac. If I didn’t vent my steam, the boiler was going to explode. Mac was about to defend our employer again, but I was having none of it. I threw down my serviette and marched upstairs, the duck confit left to grow cold on the table. It was one of my favorite dishes and Etienne had slaved over the meal.
This argument had been brewing for a long time. Keep your plans secret from your enemies. Keep them even from Scotland Yard. There is no obligation there. But don’t keep them secret from me. The slightest scrap of information could mean the difference between safety and having a bullet ricochet around my brainpan. I wasn’t going to let that happen now. There was a woman who cared very much whether I lived or died. I had searched for her all my life, had gone through hell, and I wasn’t going to give that away merely because my employer was recalcitrant.
I was inclined to pack my bags and leave him to his stewing. Take myself to a hotel and consider my next step. I was thinking for two now. Perhaps I should follow her advice and find a good, safe situation somewhere else. Her father, a rabbi, had connections in the City. I could become a banker or something. Work on the stock exchange. A nice, steady, boring position, which brought me home to dinner and her sweet face, like clockwork.
I brooded on my bed, arms and legs crossed, and considered resigning. Harm came in, slightly wagging his feather of a tail, and jumped up on the bed and settled in with a sigh. He knew we were fighting. We had tipped the balance of order and tranquility in his home and it worried him.
An hour later, I began to feel differently. Harm had long before decamped for a safer spot, and I realized that Barker needed me, even if he didn’t see it. He’s intelligent and a dangerous man to cross, but he is not invincible. His opinion might be different, but he cannot take on the world by himself.
Had my friend and confidant Israel Zangwill been there he would have told me I was talking out of both sides of my mouth. I couldn’t wish to remain safe for Rebecca’s sake and want to take more of the brunt from Barker’s shoulders.
The apology would have to come from me, I realized. Not that I was wrong, but Barker wouldn’t apologize. He would brood. He’d stare into the grate for days, watching the flames flicker. He wouldn’t investigate, he wouldn’t talk; sometimes he wouldn’t even eat.
Mac was right. I had instigated an emotional fugue. I needed to make the first move, even if it meant swallowing a good gagging lump of pride. I had started this. I had to be the one who finished it.
With a sigh that rivaled Harm’s, I stood and assembled myself, pulled on my boots, straightened my tie, and ran a comb through my hair. I tugged on my waistcoat and cuffs. One must look one’s best when facing the guillotine. Perhaps he would sack me. Then I wouldn’t feel guilty and my problems would be solved.
Going downstairs, I encountered Mac in the hall. He was where he was supposed to be, but right then I didn’t want to see his face, or I might put a fist into it and rearrange his perfect features. He crossed his arms and glared at me. No amount of disapproval on his part was going to move me. I passed through the back door.
The garden was perfect then. I wished the embassy could have seen it at that moment. Frogs croaked on the lily pads and I heard a dove in the willow tree at the far end. Barker was in the gazebo, leaning a hand against one of the posts, his head down in thought. I climbed the shallow steps and seated myself on a bench inside.
“I apologize for intruding on your story,” I said.
He said nothing, not a blessed word. I had apologized, but I wasn’t going to grovel. We were at an impasse. Five whole minutes went by until he finally spoke.
“Eventually they came. Miyoko filled each rifle while I shot the other. I was a better shot than she, and we didn’t want to waste a single round. I had barricaded our little hut with logs, and had shot close to a score of imperials before we finally ran out of ammunition. Miyoko and I stared at the other for what we imagined was the last time.
“Then the commander of the squadron called us out. He told us to give ourselves up, that we were his prisoners.
“‘Don’t trust him,’ Miyoko told me.
“‘Let us ge
t this over with,’ I said.
“I stepped out the front door, facing a clearing full of men in blue uniforms with rifles pointed at me. They had trod all over that patch of radishes I’d slaved over. I was prepared to be slaughtered. I held the sword of one of my comrades in my hand. I could use it about as well as Miyoko could use one of my rifles. The colonel in charge saw the sword in my hand and drew the sword from his scabbard. He approached me, and when he was little more than ten feet away, he ground his boots into a particular spot and waited for me to attack, which I was foolish enough to do.”
Barker took off his spectacles and tossed them on the bench. I had seen his eye before, but it was still hideous. A cut ran across the cornea and the skin below it was notched in a V.
“The colonel slashed down once. He nearly cut out my eye. I slashed with my sword, but met only air. It felt like a hot poker to the face. I screamed and walked in circles as the soldiers laughed and poked at me with their bayonet rifles. I felt rather than saw the colonel walk past me toward the house. My house, my patch, my land. My wife. I tried to follow him, but fell in a flurry of bayonets.
“Later, I woke alone. It seemed I was the last man on earth. I heard no soldiers, no shelling. Nothing. My kimono was covered in blood from a dozen wounds, but few of them were deep. I dragged myself into the house, calling my wife’s name. I found her body against a wall. She had been beheaded.”
I was dumbstruck. There was nothing one could say after that. I merely stared at him in the darkness, unable to speak.
“The man who killed my wife was Colonel Mononobe.”
It was too much, like when a wire shorts in one of those new electric generators and one is plunged into darkness. I raised my hands to my face and rested a palm against each eye.
Barker had seen and done, had experienced things no one should ever have to endure. His bones had been broken and healed imperfectly, his tissues and tendons torn, his psyche assaulted, his sanity pushed to the brink. I was being trained to follow after him and groomed to replace him.
“What happened to you?” I asked. “How did you survive?”
“Ho arrived. He had left the harbor ahead of the gunboats and came back when they were gone. He buried Miyoko and helped me to the ship. I understand I had a fever that lasted a week, but he stitched my wounds as best he could.”
“And you never returned to Japan?”
“No, never. Never, ever shall I set foot on those cursed shores.”
Jacob Maccabee was right. I stood and left him to his memories and his demons.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Tower Bridge is both the newest bridge to span the Thames and the farthest east, crossing from Southwark to a spot hard by the Tower of London. It is two hundred and thirteen feet tall with two open-air walkways that span it high above the bridge itself. It’s a good spot for looking over the city in the day, and for more clandestine activities at night. Pickpockets and women of ill fame ply their trade there and effectively bilk every penny from those who come to the bridge at night. No one comes there to get their pockets picked, but as for the other, that’s a different story.
The next afternoon, Barker had asked me to look in my notebook for where Kito had gone to find the exotic Englishwomen. As it happened, they were at Tower Bridge.
I suspected there were too many men in London who did not take their marriage vows seriously. They go out for a pint at the corner pub and keep going east. The price for a prostitute here was more than that of nearby Whitechapel, but it was still under a shilling. Women of the Chapel, then, came here because the money was better, but they had to deal with others before them, ready to protect their patch.
“No less than five quid,” a woman told us, her burly arms crossed, when Barker told her his plan. She was in her forties and life had been hard. Her hair was brassy and she was gap-toothed. She had no man to support her. Perhaps she was supporting him.
“That’s steep,” Barker noticed.
“They’ll see,” she said, nodding at the hawkish faces of other unfortunates. “And will think I work for the peelers. I’ll have to pay a few sisters to show them I ain’t.”
“Give her a fiver, lad.”
I had liberated it already and stuffed his wallet deep into my pocket, safe and sound. I handed it over and avoided her gaze as she pushed it down her cleavage.
“My beat is from this side of the bridge to that stairwell,” she said. “There’s a nook where the deed is done. Watch out for coppers. Their beat is down below, so they only come up here once an hour or two. It’s a long walk up these stairs. So, I just go about my business, right?”
“As you say,” Barker told her, as she turned and stepped aside.
“It stinks up here,” I remarked. “And the wind is strong.”
The wind moaned among the wires that held up the structure we stood on. For so large an edifice the walkway seemed flimsy, buffeted by the wind. Every man and woman here looked hungry. To them we were nothing but prey.
“What’s this bloke I’m supposed to entice look like?” she asked.
“He wears a black suit, a bowler with the brim rolled up all around, and a very thick waxed mustache.”
“And he’s a Japanese?”
“Aye, he is. He is rather difficult to miss. He has already visited this area since he arrived. I’m hoping he’ll pass the time here.”
“Where shall you gents be?”
“At the other end of the bridge. When he comes, solicit him, get him to follow you into the darkened corner. Then come out a few moments later claiming he assaulted you. We’ll raise a hue and cry and that should be enough to get him arrested. You may choose to back out if you wish. There is no shame in it.”
“I said I’d go through with it, didn’t I? I’ll give you your money’s worth. I don’t go back on a deal.”
“Very well. The choice is yours. Is there anything else you require?”
“No. All right, then. Wish me luck, gents.”
We left her and walked to the other end of the bridge. Once there, we rested our elbows on the railing and looked over the side. The Thames lay like an enormous black dragon asleep on top of the city. The breeze whistled through the railing while clouds scudded low over our heads. I felt a bit light-headed. A hundred and forty feet is still fourteen stories high. I gripped the railing rather tightly.
“We don’t know for certain he will appear.”
“We don’t,” Barker agreed. He stepped into the alcove nearby and somehow managed to light his pipe. The wind shredded the plume of smoke about his head and carried if off. Indifferently, the meerschaum merely produced more.
“You think he’ll come?”
“He seems to be guided by his baser instincts. As I recall, Japan is not a country where unsavory women are tolerated. Another point in Tokyo’s favor, I think. I believe Mr. Kito’s world is very circumspect, consisting of the embassy, wherever the general sends him, possibly the Inn of Double Happiness, and this place. I assume a cabman upon enquiry sent him here.”
“Not the kind of enquiry work we do,” I said.
“Most certainly not.”
“Yet here we are.”
He puffed. “We are after a murderer. Did you expect to find him in chapel?”
“Good point.”
“Are things moving forward with Mrs. Cowan?” Barker asked suddenly.
“Glacially, but intractably,” I said. “Her mother is dead set against me, and Rabbi Mocatta merely wants peace in the family, but Rebecca feels we can wear them down.”
“Mmmm,” he said.
I’d never considered my employer’s opinion of my marrying. It would be a nuisance to him, I suspected. I might not live nearby, I would not be on call twenty-four hours a day, and Barker’s opinion would always be the second one I considered. If he tossed me out, there went all my plans. A family could indeed interfere if a daughter was about to marry a young man with no occupation or prospects.
“There he is.”
/> I stopped contemplating my future or lack thereof, and watched as the Japanese figure of Mr. Kito strolled by. It was as if he were a strip of steel and the woman a magnet. He was drawn straight to her. He raised his hat and spoke to her, though of course we could not hear him. He even bowed once. She simpered. He took her arm and led her to one of the alcoves where they could have privacy.
Someone should stop them, I told myself. She’ll go too far.
Barker’s hand came down on my shoulder. “Wait for it,” he said.
We waited. Ten seconds, twenty. Thirty. My nerves were raw. Suddenly, she screamed. We began to run toward the alcove. The woman came running out of the darkness into the light provided by a few gaslights. Her dress had been rent, and as she ran, she tried to hold the tattered remnants of it over her bare flesh.
Then Kito came out of the pool of darkness with a face like thunder, pursuing what he supposed he had purchased with a shilling. The man was fast, I’ll give him that, lithe and athletic. He was much faster than a woman hobbled by a long skirt, attempting to cover herself, and crying for help.
We wouldn’t reach her before he caught up with her, I realized. We were too far away, and as I said, he was devilishly fast. Then suddenly, he stopped and backed off. For a moment, I wondered what had stopped him, until I heard a police whistle behind me.
“What’s going on here?” a loud voice demanded.
I turned my head and saw a welcome sight: a good, solid police constable with side whiskers and a mustache, the very image of one of the Met’s finest. I felt reassured. This was in hand once again. We would explain our role in this and Kito would be detained, possibly in connection with the death of the ambassador.
Then a bright red blotch appeared dead center in the constable’s forehead. He gave a startled look, just as the sound of the report reached my ears. The man fell back. He toppled, not like a man collapsing, but like a bureau tipping over full length. Kito had shot him, had shot a police constable in the pursuit of his duties. I’d never imagined that such a thing was possible.