Emily nodded and turned to her friend. “Can you give us a moment, CJ? I wouldn’t ask, but it’s important.”
CJ watched as the two of them walked to the far side of an ornamental rock garden, the gravel raked into graceful, swirling patterns around a few intrusive boulders placed seemingly at random. She heard the first few words they exchanged, but understood nothing, since she spoke none of the language. One of the samurai stood a few feet from her, and she tried to make eye contact, without exactly knowing why, but he proved to be as impassive as the Beefeaters she’d seen pictures of stationed at Buckingham Palace. Would it be rude to look at him anyway? He didn’t seem to mind as she took in the whole effect of his robes, dotted with the same floral design as the card Emily had shown her earlier. The handle of his sword, long enough for two hands and covered in a silk braid, such a strange combination of muscular utility and aesthetic refinement, it reminded her of the plainness of the building in front of her, with its bare wooden rails and beams. But as she looked more closely, she noticed smaller details, the fine joinery. Her father, a carpenter, used to tell her about buildings put together with no nails, held together by wooden pegs and dovetails.
“This is what I’m training to be,” she thought, “observant.” And when she turned to look at Emily and the Princess, she began to pay more attention to body language, to the sorrow implicit in the otherwise impassive posture and mien of the one, and the coiled energy flowing out to the extremities of the other and back in again. After another minute, Emily bowed, and the two of them walked back toward CJ.
“Ozawa will show you a side entrance,” the Princess said. “Thank you for paying me this visit, Tanahill-san. Please accept this token of my esteem.” A silk scarf dotted with the same golden flower as Ozawa’s kimono—she recognized it at last as a stylized chrysanthemum—the Princess slipped it off her neck and placed it in CJ’s hand along with its brooch, shaped like a forked pennant with a white border and the same flower on a red background. “This is my emblem. Anyone here will recognize it.”
At the end of a winding path, a steel door led out onto the street. Before they could pass, Ozawa said something to Emily, and only one word stuck in CJ’s ear: Ohime-sama. Emily shook her head and had a sharp word in return, after which she bowed, and Ozawa bowed even more deeply.
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Chapter Twelve
A Hard-won Confidence
“Half-breed,” Emily said, sitting in the back seat. “It means they disapprove of me. It’s kinda funny, I suppose, because in Hawai’i, when they say hafu or hapa, it can be like a badge of honor… but not necessarily in Japan.”
“And the Princess doesn’t feel that way, right?” CJ asked, glancing anxiously at the two men in the front seat. “And what about these two,” she whispered. “Who the hell are they?”
A long, deep breath preoccupied Emily, giving her a reason to delay answering, time to think, to decide, to resolve. Once she had exhaled it all, and begun to breathe normally, she turned to her friend and said, “Show them the brooch.”
“What the hell is this supposed to be?” Padgett asked, when CJ reached it over the seat back. Braswell looked over from the driver’s side once they reached a red light.
“Holy crap,” he said. “Don’t you know anything, Neil? That little pennant on the pin, it’s the official insignia of the Crown Princess. How the hell did you get that?”
“Pull up here. There’s a spot.” Emily said. “This place is quiet and does great rice.”
“We’re on duty,” Padgett snarled. “We can’t socialize with you.”
“I’m hungry,” Braswell said.
A tiny hole-in-the-wall, bamboo décor and half-curtains, four stools at the bar, a few tables, and several booths along the wall provided all the seating. Braswell and Padgett found a quiet booth in the back while Emily had a word with the man behind the counter, and CJ stood next to her uncomfortably.
“Make room, guys,” Emily said and slid in next to Braswell.
“Damn it, Ed, this is totally inappropriate.”
“Give it up, Neil. Just make room for the lady.”
“CJ wants to know who you guys are. Why don’t you tell her?” When neither man responded, stunned by her directness. “Fine. I hate keeping secrets. Stop me when I say something that isn’t true. They’re with the Diplomatic Security Service.”
“The what?” CJ asked. Padgett had turned beet red by now.
“The DSS watches the embassies, tracks threats to visiting diplomats, and keeps tabs on suspicious embassy staff. Did I get that right?”
“More or less,” Braswell said.
“Now why don’t you tell her why you’ve been following me for over a month now?”
“They’ve been following you? What on earth for?”
“Well…,” Emily said, eyes fixed on Padgett.
“Fine,” he said. “You want to clear the air. Let’s see how you like it. Miss Tanahill, we have reason to believe your friend here is a traitor.”
The table went silent as the waitress brought glasses of water, and CJ sat speechless, her face pale, as if it had been bled dry by Padgett’s statement. A moment later, the waitress returned with a large sashimi platter and two plates of pad thai. While the others stared at the food without moving, Emily picked up chopsticks and skewered a lump of wasabi, rubbed it on a piece of hamachi tuna, dipped it in soy sauce and lifted it to her lips.
“It’s good, guys. Eat. And maybe explain to my friend why you would say such a hurtful thing.”
Padgett eyed his partner, looking for some moral support, or perhaps wishing he had not climbed so far out on a limb. Braswell reached for one of the plates of noodles and scooped up a forkful.
“This is delicious,” he mumbled.
“C’mon, Ed, back me up on this.”
“No,” he shot back. “We don’t think any such thing.”
“Now tell her what you do think,” Emily said. “That’s only fair.”
“You really want to air your dirty laundry like this?” Braswell asked.
“It’s not my laundry.”
“Then why don’t you tell her?”
“Because if she hears it from you, she’ll believe it, no matter how preposterous it sounds.”
“And maybe we’ll hear how preposterous it sounds, is that what you mean?”
“Yup.”
Braswell couldn’t suppress a smile as he thought about the way Emily had managed the conversation so far.
“Ed, she’s manipulating you. Can’t you see?” Padgett said.
Braswell waved off his partner’s complaint and said: “Fair enough. Let’s do it your way. We looked into your friend after the Chinese Embassy filed an extradition request for someone we believe to be an alias of hers.”
“An alias?” CJ asked.
“Yes. Emily Hsiang.”
“Is that you, Em?” she asked, her voice quaking.
“No. Of course not,” Emily replied. The lie gave her no trouble this time. She’d practiced her response, and satisfied herself that the false identity was insignificant. No crimes had been committed using it. Only one qualm remained for her, namely that she couldn’t remember every time she’d used that passport, but she could suppress any anxiety on that score. Green tea steamed in her cup.
“Then this last month you spent following her must seem like a colossal waste of time,” CJ said.
“On the contrary,” Padgett said with considerable satisfaction, “it’s been a goldmine for us, so many interesting types flitting around your friend here, like flies on…”
“Shut it, Neil,” Braswell hissed.
“Interesting types? Like who?” CJ demanded.
“Chinese intelligence operatives, that’s who,” Emily said, hoping to distract CJ so she wouldn’t mention Kano in front of Braswell and Padgett. “You remember that night after McDonough made us see that jug band at the Ram’s Head, and we split up at Church Circle? A Chinese team accosted me after you guys l
eft, and I managed to elude them by running.”
“Running? You, Em? You’re making fun of me, right?”
“No… well, maybe, a little. But they have a traffic-cam video of it.” CJ laughed, and Emily continued, with a glance at Braswell. “And those guys who attacked us after the dance, who do you think put them up to it? Your partner is quick to assume I’m in league with people who are pretty clearly trying to do me harm.”
~~~~~~~
The ride back to Annapolis felt much more convivial to CJ. The goons in the sedan turned out to be federal agents of some sort, and even though they seemed to think her friend might be a criminal type—one of them thought this, at least—they also seemed amenable to finding out she wasn’t. How strange the way people reacted to Emily. Her, a criminal?... you only had to talk to her for ten minutes to see how wrong that was. She found herself trying to recall her first encounter with Emily. How did she seem to her then? How odd that she couldn’t remember. Long nights studying Calculus or World History together with her roommates, that’s what she remembered. But the first encounter seemed to have left no trace in her.
“This really came from the Crown Princess?” Padgett asked from behind the wheel, watching Braswell turn the brooch over in his fingers.
“She put it in my hand herself,” CJ said.
“That’s the part I don’t get,” Braswell said. “Nobody sees the Crown Princess in private. I mean, why would she want to see you two?”
“You know, I’m pretty sure she didn’t want to see me,” CJ said. “But you should’ve seen her daughter and Em.”
“The little princess was there?”
“She takes one look at you-know-who over here, and the next thing anyone knows she runs across the room and throws herself into Em’s arms.”
“Holy crap,” Padgett said. “I bet the security staff loved that.”
Suddenly self-conscious, CJ glanced over at Emily and said: “Sorry, Em. It just came out.”
“Don’t sweat it, CJ. I hate secrets. Tell these guys whatever you want.”
“How about you tell us what the Crown Princess wanted with you?” Padgett said to Emily.
The dying sunset of an early December twilight glowed in the rearview mirror, and one last, feeble ray gleamed in CJ’s eyes. With each mile, the Sunday evening traffic on Rt. 50 melted away. Around Bowie, the only other vehicles on the eastbound side turned on their headlights.
“You really want to know?” Emily asked. “I mean, it’s gonna sound pretty strange.”
“Don’t you worry about us,” Braswell said. “We’re all about strange.”
“Okay, fine. The Crown Princess thinks I’m descended from one of the Genji clans.”
“Are you?” he asked.
“Who exactly are the Genji?” CJ asked.
“I got this part, Miss Tenno,” Braswell said. “They’re descendants of the illegitimate children of the emperors from several centuries ago.”
“That’s right, more or less. My family apparently comes from the Minamoto clan.”
“So you are a Genji?” CJ asked.
“That’s not exactly clear,” Emily said. “The Imperial Household agency did a study of the family and decided I’m descended from a samurai retainer of one of the Minamotos.”
“Okay,” Braswell said. “The more interesting question is probably why the Household Agency did a study in the first place.”
“Well, that’s where things get really strange.”
“Stranger than finding out your best friend could be related to the Japanese Imperial family?” CJ said.
“Maybe. It’s got to do with an heirloom, a sword handed down in my family for generations. It had imperial symbols on it, and I decided to donate it to the Household Agency. Apparently, the Princess’s samurai guards thought it was Kusanagi-no-tsurugi.”
“You must be joking,” Braswell blurted out. “No one believes those old stories anymore. You don’t, do you?”
“What old stories?” CJ asked, and she could see Padgett had turned his head all the way around, eyes fixed on Emily with the same question in them. She tapped his shoulder and pointed to the road.
“It’s a magical sword, Kusanagi, and a few thousand years ago the first emperor received it from the Goddess of the Sun, who happened to be his grandmother,” Braswell said with evident satisfaction.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Padgett snorted out. “Is that what you think this is about?”
An odd sort of distance expanded behind Emily’s eyes, or so it seemed to CJ, as if Emily’s mind had traveled far away while they guffawed over the seeming extravagance of the ancient Shinto tales. Glassy-eyed and stone-faced, did she even know or care about the other occupants of the car?
“Let’s take the scenic route,” Braswell said, and directed Padgett to the exit for Highway 3. “Follow this to Route 450.”
“Do you believe in that stuff, Em?” CJ asked, with a hand on her friend’s shoulder.
“It’s not about what I believe. What do you think Ozawa believes?”
The reminder of the samurai induced CJ to reassemble the disparate pieces of what she had seen at the embassy, the little girl rushing into her friend’s arms, the samurai preventing the functionaries from intervening, the deferential way he followed them through the garden. In hindsight, she saw clearly that he was less interested in restricting their access to the Princess than in holding the security teams at bay. And when they parted at the gate, and Emily rebuked him, the scene took on a fresh significance.
“He called you Ohime-sama. What did he mean?”
At the sound of this phrase, Braswell snapped his head around. “Holy crap,” he blurted out. “They do believe it, don’t they?”
“Believe what?” Padgett asked. “What’s it mean?”
“He addressed her as ‘princess’. Was he serious?”
“He bowed to her as he said it,” CJ said, “deeply. For a moment, I thought he meant to kneel at her feet… like that guy in the alley.”
“What the hell is going on?” Padgett barked.
“If the Samurai treated her like that, it means they believe her sword really is Kusanagi, and that the Household Agency is wrong about her descent. Is this true?” he asked Emily.
“How should I know?” she said. “It kinda freaks me out when they do that.”
“And just how do you know all this, Ed,” Padgett demanded.
“You really are a greenhorn, Neil. I was only stationed in Tokyo for ten years. I could hardly have done my job and not know this stuff,” Braswell said, and then scratched his chin in silence as he contemplated Emily’s face. “But you already knew that…. You had Cardano check us out, didn’t you?”
“I may be young, but I’m not stupid,” Emily said.
“And that’s why you brought your friend along. We’d be more likely to believe you, ’cause we’d think you wouldn’t want to tangle yourself up in lies in front of your friend.”
“Is that true, Em?” CJ asked.
“And I wanted you guys along so she’d know what to believe.”
“She’s been manipulating us all along,” Padgett said. “I told you not to trust her, Ed.”
“Yes,” Emily said, “maybe I have, but I also haven’t said anything that isn’t true.”
Where Highway 3 merged with Route 450, traffic thinned out even more. Only their own headlights and two more pairs trailing behind illuminated the road, much darker now, tree-lined and deserted. No sign of the broader landscape presented itself through the deepening twilight and the woods on either side.
“How do you know you can trust us?” Braswell asked.
“A grizzled veteran who’s seen how institutions can bring out the worst in whoever seeks advancement through them… I think I can trust you. And the young hothead,” she said, nodding to Padgett, “I know pretty well what to expect from him.”
“And me,” CJ asked, almost afraid to hear how her friend would answer.
“Oh, CJ,
it’s not about trust between you and me, but I needed you to see how serious this business is, because it might turn ugly.”
“Wait a second,” Padgett said in a sudden realization. “What guy in an alley?”
Braswell saw it an instant before his distracted partner did, lights flaring in the mirrors. One of the vehicles behind them had accelerated suddenly, attempting to overtake them with no traffic on the almost deserted road to account for their maneuver—his instincts told him to prepare for the worst. No headlights lit up the westbound lanes, and the other vehicle behind them had also accelerated, as if acting in concert.
“Neil, hostiles coming up on your left,” Braswell shouted, as the side door of the van, now next to them, slid open. “Bump ’em, before they can fire.” Padgett swerved into the van, upending a man with an assault rifle strapped over one shoulder. The impact from the sedan following behind slammed Braswell into his seatback, and then into the dashboard. “Damn it, Neil, step on it. Get us the hell outa here.”
Bullets struck the rear window. “CJ, get down,” Emily cried, and yanked her friend into a half-prone position on the backseat, then probed her head and shoulders to make sure she hadn’t been hit. “Looks like an AK-47 in the van, probably more in the pursuit,” she shouted.
Braswell hoisted himself partway through the passenger side window, swung his arm over the roof and sent four rounds into the front of the van. “Hit ’em again, Neil,” he yelled over the wind noise. A burst from the pursuit car caught Braswell in the shoulder, and he wrestled himself back in the passenger seat, cursing at the top of his lungs.
Peeking between the seats, CJ saw his face turn pale and beads of sweat form around his ears. He’s going into shock. She kicked the back of his seat and called out to him. “Keep it together. This is no time to fade out on us.” She hadn’t known what name to use, and didn’t have the nerve to be familiar the way Emily had. He looked at her and smiled, a little shaky, but now focused, picked up his gun from the seat and tried to turn to his right to fire out the side window at the car behind them.
The van veered wildly, and struck the side of their car, causing the man with the AK-47 to lurch toward them and bring the gun to bear on the back window, his finger inside the trigger guard. Emily reached out of the window and deflected the barrel upwards before he could fire, then seized the gunstock, yanking him forward out of the van and twisting the gun up sharply. With a scream, he fell onto the door, groping feverishly with his free arm for something to keep from hitting the pavement, shrieking as Emily bent back the finger caught on the trigger. Two rounds went through the roof as she struck his throat and wrenched the gun off his hand. With a single, smooth movement, she slipped the strap from his shoulder and struck him across the face with the butt end of the gun. He fell between the vehicles, and the van jumped when it rolled over his legs. The second car probably hit him too, judging from the movement of its headlights, and then it dropped back from the pursuit.
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