“Where’d they say it went down?” Emily asked.
“Eighty miles northeast of the Riau Islands.” Perry ducked his head to avoid clunking it against the doorframe as the van tilted around one corner.
“So probably not pirates that far from the Strait of Malacca, right?” Durant rubbed his chin.
“Yeah, and pirates generally don’t sink ships. They rob them.”
“Wait a second,” Emily said. “Northeast? What were they even doing all the way over there? The shipping lane is at least a hundred miles further west.”
“You got me,” Perry said. “Malfunctioning tech, maybe? It’s not like those ships are state of the art, you know, and if the captain’s skills aren’t…”
“Why are they scrambling the squadron?” Durant scrunched his face into that look of canine perplexity all his friends knew so well. “It’s not like we can be of any service. By the time we get there, there’s not gonna be…
“Okay, fine,” Perry said, letting his exasperation with the situation show. “It’s largely for show. Is that what you want to hear? But you can’t seriously expect that no one in China is gonna think we shouldn’t try to do something. Hell, we’ll be lucky if no one thinks it was our fault for not catching ’em on our first sailing.”
“Yeah, as if anything was gonna happen on the basis of the bullshit intell Diao and Ongpin provided.” Durant gave his best Jarhead snort, a combination of disdain and fatalism that perfectly expressed the hard-won bit of wisdom every Marine carried somewhere deep in his lower intestines, namely that shadowy-clever interests would always be working against them… and only the stupid pragmatism of absolute perseverance could see them through. “Right, LT?”
“Shut up for a second, you clowns,” Emily said. She shrugged Durant’s hammy hand off her shoulder and ticked down the news-flashes on Perry’s smartphone. “The CSCL Thetis,” she read aloud, “sank off the coast of Malaysia… three fatalities reported… the cargo consisted of food, farm equipment and electronics.”
“Like they really know what was on that ship.” Durant tugged on his seatbelt as the van veered. “Wasn’t it just a bunch of miscellaneous containers?”
“I suppose someone looked at the manifests.”
Durant craned his neck over Emily’s shoulder to see what she was reading. “It says there that it sailed under an Indonesian flag. What makes you think it’s Chinese?”
“Because CSCL is the Chinese Shipping Company. It makes no difference where they registered it. It’s a Chinese ship with a Chinese crew.”
“As far as we’re concerned, the blowback is the same,” Perry added.
“Let’s walk in from here,” Emily said, when she saw the line of shuttles stacked up at the security gate. She pulled the sliding door open, and the driver hit the brakes.
“You know they hate it when you pull stunts like this. The line at the gate won’t go any faster just because we’re on foot.”
“But we don’t have to be stuck at the end of it. Just flash that shiny, gold ‘Budweiser’ you’re so proud of and they’ll speed us through quickly enough.”
The only thing more irritating than her gentle mockery was the pleasure Durant took in it. Of course, it didn’t feel any better when she turned out to be right. In the minute or three it took to cover the hundred yards from the gate to the gangway leading up to the Bonhomme Richard, Theo came running up to them waving what looked like a sat-phone, which he pushed into Emily’s hands.
“The Admiral wants us on the Blue Ridge.” He placed one hand on Perry’s shoulder to pull him away from the gangway and the others. Turning to Emily he said, “That’s your mom on the other end. Michael arranged it. Ditch the phone when you’re done. Don’t bring it onboard.”
“And, like, what about me?” Durant said, with an exaggerated moan. “You guys are all ditching me, too?”
Perry glanced back over his shoulder as Theo tugged in the other direction. Emily waved Durant off and stalked over to the edge of the dock, phone clamped to the side of her head and a hand cupped over the other ear.
“What’s the rush?” Perry asked.
“The Admiral’s arranged a conference-call and we need to be there. Given the situation, he’s stepping in as CWC.”
“Whoa,” Perry said. “Does that mean he’s moving over to the BHR for the rest of the mission?”
“I don’t think so. At least, he doesn’t appear to be getting ready for a move.”
“Then the Blue Ridge is gonna do more than just shadow us, I guess.” Perry glanced back at Emily again, now standing at the edge of the dock, silhouetted against the distant, looming shape of Mt. Kokuzo, on the other side of Sasebo Bay.
“Don’t worry. It’s gonna take at least another eight hours before they can get underway, and even if this takes longer, they’ll just fly us over on an SH-60.”
Perry shrugged Theo’s reassurances off. “What’s her mom want? Did Michael say?”
* * *
“What is it, Mom? This phone can’t be secure. I don’t care what Michael says.”
“It’s secure enough for this, Chi-chan.”
“You’re scaring me a little. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Theo called with the news, and after Li Li and Stone saw it on the TV… well, the kids were frightened. I think they need to hear your voice.”
“You told ’em it wasn’t my ship, right?”
“Yes, yes, don’t worry. But I don’t think they realized… at least Stone didn’t…”
“Are you okay, Mom?” Emily paused to consider the sound of her mother’s breathing, or perhaps it was just the hiss of digital static. “Because there’s like fifteen hundred Marines on board to keep me safe, not to mention a couple of SEALs… and CJ and Zaki. I’m among friends.”
“I know, sweetheart. It’s just…”
“I’ll be careful. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too, Chi-chan.”
“Now how about you let the kids have a chance.”
“One more thing. Michael has a message for you.”
“Not on this line, Mom. It’s not…”
“I know. Theo will know what it is. Just ask him about the conference call, about whatever it was that O’Brien thinks is more of Michael’s paranoia.”
Even though she was almost a teenager, Li Li still didn’t quite feel comfortable speaking on the phone. Emily listened for her voice on the other end, tried to detect the sound of her breath, her heart. “Are you there, sweetheart?”
“Emmy, I’m here,” she said, after a moment.
“It’s so good to hear your voice, my big girl. Is Stone there, too?”
“Yes, he’s here.” The tone of Li Li’s voice had changed slightly, revealing a touch of sibling exasperation, and some excited clamoring and grunting echoed in the background.
“You’re on speaker,” Yuki said. “He can hear you loud and clear.”
“I’m here, too,” Andie said.
“Why don’t we clear out and let them have her all to themselves?” Yuki said.
“Okay… stay safe, Emily. We all miss you.”
After the fussiness of long-distance farewells died down, Li Li began to sound more confident on the phone. “He never stops, Emmy.”
“Stone,” she said, “you need to take good care of your sister, and that means letting her have some alone time.”
“…and not always making me watch whatever he wants to watch on TV,” Li Li added.
“I love you, my sweet boy,” Emily cooed at him, trying to overcome the difficulty of communicating over a telephone with someone who doesn’t speak. He’d been mute since the day she’d found him, hiding behind a cabinet in a secret North Korean compound in Kamchatka. All the love in the world, and the occasional visit to various medical specialists and speech therapists, had done nothing for his condition, whatever its origin was. The doctors were stumped, though Emily knew well enough what was behind it all.
“He hears you,” Li Li finally an
swered for him. “When will you be home?”
“Not for a long time, I’m afraid… maybe a year. Can you get along without me?”
“Do I have a choice?” She must have glanced at Stone, because she offered a quick emendation: “Do we have a choice?”
Of course, they didn’t, but Emily began to consider alternatives. Could she fly them to Japan before school started again in the fall? Was it worth the risk of exposing the two of them to the vagaries of Border Control? Michael had crafted Stone’s papers so that no one would raise an eyebrow – but was it really worth testing unnecessarily?
Ending the call was almost impossible, and fortunately various inquiries about friends, chores, and camping trips helped stave off the inevitable. But eventually, all good things… if only she could avoid making any promises she couldn’t keep.
“The summer will pass, and then you’ll be back in school with your friends, and I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Will you be here for Christmas, at least?”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t know yet.” Even as she said this, the resolve was beginning to form in her heart that Christmas was already too long to wait. “I’ll try. Kiss Stone for me, and Yuki and Andie.”
Once the line had gone dead, she smashed the phone on a piling and kicked the pieces into the bay, and let her eyes rest one more time on the dark outline of Mt. Kokuzo… and the sliver-moon that hung just above the horizon, a few minutes from the evening star, which it seemed to want to devour.
“Protect.” That’s the word she heard in her heart. But protect whom? The voice sounded new to her – not the shrill tones of her great-great-grandmother, Amaterasu-omikami, the goddess of the sun, that had so terrified her in adolescence. This voice sounded more like an ally, even a friend, perhaps a cousin, though of what extraction she could hardly guess.
“Protect.”
She turned to walk back to the Bonhomme Richard’s gangway. “Once more into the breach…”
* * *
“What do we know about this ship?” Mr. Saito asked, as soon as the roar of the engines died down and the plane had levelled off. With no one else seated in the tiny, first-class cabin, he must have deemed it safe to have a sensitive conversation.
“Probably just pirates,” Gyoshin said. Of course, he wanted to know what impact the sinking might have on public opinion, and specifically what the cost might be of his efforts to persuade the Prime Minister to re-militarize the nation.
Even though he came from one of the most ancient families, at least as ancient as her own, they hadn’t included him in ‘the plan’. In fact, the Sogas had wanted to have him killed. Just another bureaucrat, one of many who had traded family dignity for a government sinecure, Gyoshin could practically smell Jin-san’s resentment of his ilk, the sort of people who traded their own family history cheaply, and preserved no memory of what hers had once been.
That day was still etched in her mind, sitting with Jin-san on a lonely bench in the Meiji Jingu, a sprawling oasis of solitude in the midst of one of the busiest shopping districts in Tokyo. Like Roman triumvirs, or duumvirs in this case, they’d traded names back and forth on their respective lists, people whose contributions the nation no longer needed – her list had been dictated by Ojii-san, but she suspected that Jin-san’s might have been at least partly her own.
“Saito-san may still prove useful,” she’d said at the time, though she cared less about his support for a program necessary to ‘the plan’, than for his lax supervision of her expense account, ever alert to the danger of letting Jin-san know exactly how impoverished she really was.
“There are more reliable men cowering under every third cabbage leaf,” Jin-san had said.
“Maybe so, but this one is already in place, and a known quantity.”
Jin-san relented, as Gyoshin knew she would – how else could she preserve the air of noble indifference? The thought that she’d preserved his life, however insignificant he might really be, gave her some little bit of satisfaction as she sat next to him now, the plane banking sharply left. She’d persuaded him to take a connecting flight through Yonago, so she could get home early. Better that than endure another trip in the Soga’s jet, and Jin-san’s disingenuous solicitude.
“We already know it can’t be pirates,” Mr. Saito said. “Not that far north of the strait. What do we know about the CSCL?”
“The Board of Directors reads like a who’s-who of the Chinese Central Committee,” she said, merely relaying information she’d gleaned from something Minoru-san had said to Jin-san. This was another one of those moments, that had become altogether too frequent in recent years, when corporate intell proved superior to what Defense could get on its own.
“Then it’s not likely their government is behind it.”
“Probably not… but they can be very… indirect,” she said, pausing to find a suitably delicate word. “I wouldn’t want to underestimate them.”
“If it’s really terrorists, they’ll try to use it as an excuse to accelerate their efforts to militarize the Spratly Islands.”
“That sounds about right.”
“In which case, public support for de-pacifying the constitution is sure to rise.”
Gyoshin could hardly suppress a smile at hearing these words – how little Mr. Saito understood the situation about to unfold all around him, speculating on his own prospects in a newly militarized Japan even as his deputy was preparing to transform the nation in ways he could scarcely imagine.
Old man Okamoto met her at the airport in the last functioning estate car, just as the sun began to turn the eastern horizon a pale blue. At least, she had no luggage to burden him with, a small consolation for hauling him out of bed this early.
“Hana-chan said you’d be here, Heiji-san. Is anything wrong?”
“Yes… and no, Okamoto-san. Thank you for taking this trouble.”
“It is no trouble.”
Gyoshin contemplated the side of his face as he guided the car past Niiyama, and turned down one back road after another – he was trying to avoid using Yasuki Road, no doubt because of the tolls. Mount Hachibuse loomed in the distance, and the first rays of the sun gilded its summit, and after the next bend the Chodai-ji Temple slipped by on the left.
“Grandfather is dead.” The words cost her surprisingly little to utter, much less, apparently, than it cost Okamoto-san to hear them. His shoulders slumped at the news. “I have work to do, and I need your help with the burial.”
“It is the passing of an era, Heiji-san. The news will shake the entire prefecture.”
“Thank you, Okamoto-san, for that sentiment. But I must ask you to keep it secret. No one must learn of his passing.”
“Forgive me, Heiji-san, but that is not right. Your grandfather was a great man. He deserves a public funeral.”
“If only that were possible…”
“Why isn’t it? Are you worried about the expense?”
Gyoshin stared at the old man in amazement. Was he actually going to offer his little pittance for the cost of the funeral? Equally surprising was that she hadn’t given the cost a single thought. This was the first time it had crossed her mind.
“No, Okamoto-san. The expense would be great, but other necessities constrain me. A funeral would be too dangerous?”
“Dangerous?”
“If his death becomes known, I will be killed within a few days… and Haru-chan will be in danger, too.”
He turned up the drive to the estate and stopped the car, so he might breathe for a moment, and hear a fuller explanation of this shocking revelation. “Have you discussed this with your brother?” he asked, after a few minutes.
“You mustn’t discuss it with anyone, not even your wife. Events are moving swiftly now, and the only way to keep Haru-chan safe is to act as if my grandfather is still alive.”
In fact, she hadn’t told her brother, and meant to keep him in the dark for as long as possible. He could not be trusted with such
information. Even if everything fell out for the best, she expected to be dead within a year, but that could come a lot sooner if her brother shot his mouth off among his friends. Fortunately, the thought that Haru-chan’s life might depend on keeping this secret did more to persuade Okamoto-san than any other information she could offer. She reminded him of the events leading up to the beginning of the last war, when political assassinations became commonplace and ancient vendettas seemed to steer the country to its own ruin. His parents had told the same stories hers had, and he shivered to remember.
The old man managed to induce the backhoe to belch smoke and rumble to life, and he met Gyoshin and Hana in the woods, in a secluded glade of soaring maples. They’d managed to wheel the body out on a garden cart, wrapped from head to toe in the sheet and blanket he’d slept under. The machine made short work of digging the hole and filling it in after, and the still rigid body landed with a thud at the bottom, too deep for them to lower it in more respectfully. Hana whimpered at the sound and handed Gyoshin the powdered lime she had remembered to bring to sprinkle over the pit.
“Two meters down,” Gyoshin said, too quietly for the old people to hear. “That ought to keep the old dragon out of trouble.”
Chapter 16
The Terrorist
It had been seven days since the squadron set sail from Sasebo, rushing the departure and relying on an early Underway Replenishment to supply whatever had been neglected, which meant that Emily didn’t see much of CJ for the first few days. By contrast, Kiku’s company began to feel more burdensome, and in the odd moments Emily meditated on what Theo had told her of that secure conference-call on the Blue Ridge.
“SECNAV tried not to mention it at all,” Theo had said, once she’d cornered him alone in his quarters. “But General Lukaszewicz kept bringing it up.”
“Well, my mom said Michael expected they’d think his idea was paranoid.”
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