A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set

by Stephen Hunter

  “Killing not merely a man, though. Killing a family? A wife, a husband…”

  Swagger sat back and squinted at the doctor. “Hmmm. You saw clean through my little game.”

  “Mr. Swagger,” said Dr. Otowa, “I am in regular e-mail contact with blade societies, collectors, and curators all over the world. If a man was killed in America and a rare blade stolen, I would know. On the other hand, several months ago, a man named Philip Yano and his family were destroyed not twenty miles from where we now sit. It was very puzzling, very sad. The next morning an American made a scene at the site of the crime, claiming before witnesses that he had given Yano a rare sword that had been stolen. For his efforts, he was rather unceremoniously asked to leave the country. The investigation concerning Philip Yano has stalled and it seems that nothing is being done, as if certain police officials believe some crimes are best ignored. Now there is an American in my office seeking to discover something about what blades would be worth murdering for. It wasn’t a hard connection to make. I don’t see how you got back in the country, though.”

  “I have a very good fake passport in another name.”

  “You realize what will happen to you if you are caught illegally on Japanese soil.”

  “I know it will go hard.”

  “Yet you risk that?”

  “I do.”

  “The way of the warrior is death. It is not fifteen years of masturbation in a Japanese prison.”

  “I will do what I must do.”

  “Mr. Swagger, I suspect you are a capable man. You had the sponsorship of Yoshida, who would not lend use of his name to a criminal. So the misrepresentation itself speaks of your righteousness.”

  “I only mean to see this thing out, sir.”

  “I’m going to tell you a story. I’m going to tell you the story of a sword. Of a sword worth killing for, a sword worth dying for, a sword that would make its possessor the most important and revered man in Japan. Are you ready?”

  “I am, sir.”

  “All right, Mr. Swagger,” he said, “let’s begin. Now, so that you understand, let me give you something to hold on to.”

  He went to his wall display case, unlocked it, and took out a weapon.

  “Katana. Sixteen fifty-one, used by a man called Nogami.”

  Swagger took the thing.

  “Go ahead, take it out of the saya. Don’t worry about etiquette now. Just pull it out and don’t cut a finger or a leg off.”

  Swagger pulled it out. It was heavier than it looked. It had a strange electricity to it.

  The blade wore a slight curve, was dappled along its edge, where the harder steel that cut met the softer steel that supported; a groove ran up one side, and the tip was a unique orchestration of ridges upturned to a chisel point. Why was it like that? Why wasn’t it just a point? There had to be a reason. These people studied cutting and stabbing, made art and science out of them; they knew the sword and no implement in history had been so engineered as a Japanese sword.

  The handle was long enough for two hands and then some, but the whole thing could be used one-handed if necessary.

  It wasn’t beautiful. No, it looked like a weapon, like, say, an M-14 rifle, perfectly, exactly functional, meant to do one thing very well and built by people who cared about nothing but that one thing.

  In his hands, it seemed to come to life. What had Tommy Culpepper said? Oh, yeah: it wants to cut something. It did. It yearned for flesh. A gun was different; you grew used to it, and it became a tool. But the sword thrilled you each time you picked it up.

  He stood and waved the blade artlessly through the air, feeling the slight thrum as it gathered speed and momentum. The grooves made it sing a bit as it sliced left and right.

  “Let’s begin with snow, Mr. Swagger. Snow enters the Japanese imagination by chance on a cold night in what the old calendars call December seventeen-oh-two, but which is by ours January thirty-first, seventeen-oh-three. Think of a column of men, forty-seven of them, trudging through the dark city then called Edo, through the whirling blizzard. They are hunched against the cold, but the weather is not on their minds. Vengeance is.”

  Bob saw snow. He saw men jogging through it, swords such as this one slung, heads down, breaths blowing steam into the dark night air. It could have been Russia, it could have been the Chosin Reservoir, or it could have been Valley Forge. It could have been anywhere men fought for what they believed.

  “They look like Green Berets or Russian Spetsnaz or Brit SAS. They wear camouflage, jagged patterns on their kimonos. Each carries two murderously sharp swords, as well as, somewhere, a shorter tanto, just in case. Most carry yari, our word for spear. Each of them has been training his whole life for this. No commando team in history has had more talent, skill, will, and violence at its disposal.

  “Who have they come to fight? The story goes back two years. The shogun—military dictator, the true power in Japan—required that his lords spend every other year in Edo servicing his court in elaborate ceremonial duties that were the court’s entire purpose. I know how foolish it sounds: think how brilliant it is. He wants them consumed with worry over the ceremony, far from advisors and sycophants, so that they won’t plot against him. It’s the time of seppuku. If a lord makes a mistake, if he violates a law, if he crosses his legs wrong or wears the wrong hat—”

  He made a gesture, drawing his firm hand in a fist across his belly.

  “In seventeen hundred a young lord from the House of Asano, in Ako, was called to Edo for his turn in the court. He was—well, opinions differ. A man of probity and strength, a great man who wouldn’t kowtow, who hated corruption, effeminacy, bureaucratic infighting, all the propensities of headquarters. Or was he a silly fool overmatched, outwitted, and ultimately destroyed? He may have been a mediocrity, a retardate, a crusader. Opinions vary. What’s important is that for some reason he will not play the court game, which is bribery. The most important figure at the court is the master of tea ceremonies—essentially the shogun’s social secretary, secretly controlling everything. His name is Kira. He has seven other names, but we call him Kira. He’s easy to get along with. Just give him a lot of money.”

  “Asano won’t.” The circumstances were familiar. Bob had seen movies more or less covering them.

  “No, possibly out of idealism, possibly out of stupidity, possibly out of naïveté. Kira is furious. Kira, by the way, is ambiguous. Some see him as a decadent libertine, a partaker in the pleasures of the Floating World, a seducer of young maids. Others see him simply as a man guarding the traditions he had inherited, under no obligation to reform. He did as he was taught. In his way, he was obedient to the dictates of his lord too. Thus, angered and insulted by Asano’s refusal to bribe him, he declares war on Asano, but not with blades. He shames the younger man, he gossips about him to destroy his reputation, and remember, to the Japanese, reputation is everything. The pressure on Asano is incredible. If he makes a mistake—” He made a sound like a belly slitting. “And Asano one day breaks down. In a fit of rage at some insult or other, he pulls his wakizashi—short sword—and lurches after the much older man in a part of the shogun’s castle called the Pine Corridor. He manages to cut Kira twice, once on the forehead, once on the shoulder.”

  Bob looked at the weapon.

  “Asano has violated court etiquette; he has pulled his blade in the shogun’s palace. It’s an instant death sentence. Say what you will for Asano, he died with far more dignity than he lived. He wrote a poem in the seconds before: ‘I wish I had seen / the end of spring / but I do not miss / the falling of the cherry blossoms.’ Then he cut his own guts out.

  “The shogunate confiscates his property, his mansion, and it drives all his retainers out. Now they are shamed, they are unemployed, they have nothing.”

  “You know, I think I saw some movies about this. I never quite understood them, I now realize, but I know what happens. The Forty-seven Ronin. They visit Kira two years later. The government has abolished
the clan, confiscated its property, and driven them out to the countryside, but they weren’t quite done. One night, they came to call.”

  “When it was snowing. Correct. Come look at this and bring the sword. I want the sword in your hand when you see this.”

  The two men rose, and Dr. Otowa took Bob over to a woodcut on the wall.

  “The greatest Japanese warrior artist was Utagawa Kuniyoshi. He portrayed that night and the men who took part dozens of times, and from him come all our images of the event, even if he was working in the nineteenth century, one hundred sixty years after the fight. This is his triptych entitled ‘Attack of the forty-seven Ronin on Kira’s Mansion.’”

  Bob looked. He saw war, familiar enough. A melee, a whirl, a crazed mess, no rules, no coherence, men in desperate postures, faces grim, driving forward with the long spears and swords, just like the one he held.

  “See that one there,” said Dr. Otowa, pointing to a dominant armored figure in the center of the battle, with the longest spear, urging his men on with some sort of horsetail switch. “That’s Oishi, the senior retainer of the House of Asano. He is the hero of the story. He is the man who planned and led the attack, who held the Ronin together, who coordinated intelligence reports, who laid out the final strategy. He knew he was being watched by the shogun’s secret informers so he went so far as to leave his wife and go live in a brothel, pretending dissolution to mislead the spies. Or that is what is said. Maybe he just needed an excuse to leave the woman and live it up with the geishas until the day came.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” said Bob.

  “Not at all. Oishi divides his men into two groups, assaults through the snow. One man is assigned to cut the bowstrings of Kira’s bodyguards, so there’s no way they can get their big weapons into play. Then it’s man on man, sword on sword. A fellow named Horibe Yosube was the best swordsman; he was accompanied by his father-in-law, Horibe Yahei, who was seventy-seven. Many of the men were old. The youngest was Oishi’s son, who was seventeen. But it is Oishi we are interested in.”

  “He killed Kira.”

  “Yes. After all the killing was over, they found the vile Kira hiding in the charcoal shed. Oishi knew him because of his age and the scar on his forehead. He ripped the old man’s jacket off and found the second scar on the shoulder. Oishi offered him the tanto. Kira was no samurai. He declined. Oishi beheaded him with a single stroke from his wakizashi, which was the blade that Asano had used to disembowel himself. Now that sword, Seppuku of Asano, then Beheader of Kira, that is a sword Japan would love to have. What happened to it? We don’t know. We only know that it was made a hundred years or so earlier by a smith named Norinaga in Yamato.”

  “I see.”

  “No, no, you don’t, because I haven’t finished the story. The world would understand the story I’ve told you. Loyalty, courage, violence, justice. What a primal narrative. How satisfying. Now, however, comes the Japanese part. The Forty-seven Ronin? Did they run and hide? Did they sail to China and Korea and change their names? No. They marched in formation to Sengakuji Temple, where their lord was buried, washed the head of Kira, and turned the head over to the priests. Then they turned themselves in to the shogun and awaited judgment.

  “There was much debate, but in the end, all of them, all of them, were ordered to commit seppuku, and all of them did. Here’s the truly Japanese part: they were happy to do so. The story isn’t a tragedy, it’s got a happy ending. The Forty-seven, within a year, had been ordered by the shogunate to split their bellies, and on a single day, an orgy of belly splitting took place. That is why we remember them. That is why hundreds of people go to Sengakuji Temple here in Tokyo every day to visit the graves and burn incense to their spirits. That is why there is a big festival on the fourteenth of December—to commemorate the night Oishi cut the old man’s head off. That’s the sword. That’s the one. It’s just like the one you hold in your hand now.”

  Bob looked again at the weapon.

  “Could it somehow have ended up shortened, remounted in ’thirty-nine shin-gunto furniture, and carried in World War Two?”

  “There’s no reason at all why it couldn’t have. It was lost. It could be anywhere, it could be nowhere.”

  “What would verify it?”

  “The shape of the blade and the structure of the ridges and the nature of the hamon would place it in the right time frame; then if enough was left on the tang, the presence of Norinaga’s name and the Asano crest would complete the triangulation. None of the other Ronin had swords by Norinaga. Oishi had Asano’s wakizashi and katana, with a white cord around the koshirae. Only Oishi carried Norinaga.”

  “And if you had that sword—what would you do with it?”

  “Possession of Beheader of Kira would be a totem of samurai purity that would propel its owner to instant fame. Its recovery would electrify Japan. I’d donate it to my own museum and display it to the people of Japan. It would be a gift to the nation. The nation would rejoice. Or most of it, anyhow.”

  “What would the man who wiped out the Yanos do with it?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Swagger. I don’t know. But he certainly wouldn’t give it up easily. Mr. Swagger, do you understand what you’re getting yourself into?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “I have a lead. A policeman, said to be an expert, examined the sword I brought into the country at the airport. He was the only one who saw it. He had enough time to make an impression of the tang. When I examined the sword in America the mekugi was cemented in place. Yet when I watched Yano examine the sword, that pin popped right out. So someone had disassembled the sword; it could only have been that policeman, who had it in his custody for three hours. That was the only time it was out of my sight. He won’t want to talk with me, but that’s too bad. I will learn of a next step from him. I will pursue that next step. In the end, I will find who stole the blade and I will retrieve it, no matter what.”

  “These people will come for you.”

  “I have been at risk before.”

  “Yes, I realize. In the military.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is different. It’s not war, it’s more intimate. Are you armed?”

  “No. I’m sure I could get a gun.”

  “Yes, but if you were caught here without a passport and with an illegal gun…I hate to think of the consequences. Possibly you should hire a bodyguard.”

  “He’d just get in the way.”

  “Do you have any martial arts skills?”

  “I know a trick or two. I was in the Marine Corps for fifteen years and took a few unarmed combat courses there. I’m not afraid of violence.”

  “Fear has nothing to do with it. The bravest untrained man facing the most cowardly trained swordsman would die in a tenth of a second. Do you know the sword?”

  “No.”

  “If a skilled man came at you with a sword, what would you do?”

  “Well, I suppose I’d go into the OODA loop: observe, orient, decide, and act. That’s the core of—”

  “You would die, Mr. Swagger. That’s all you would do. Look, I’m sure you’re a very brave man. But get some instruction. Learn some fundamentals, at least, if you’re determined to explore these dark Japanese alleys. They are unkind places for the uninitiated.”

  “I hear you.”

  “There’s no way you could pick up what some have studied for a lifetime. But at least you’d have some sort of a chance if assaulted.”

  “I’ll consider it.”

  “Here,” he said. “Here’s the number of a fellow in Kyoto. I will call him and tell him of the gaijin who thinks he’s Toshiro Mifune. He and I will have a good laugh. We were kendo competitors many, many years ago. We pelted each other bloody over the decades. He trained my son. He’ll see you, as a favor to me, even if only to be amused. You should spend a week with him and listen to what he has to say. Or you should go home. Those are your only choic
es. ‘Steel cuts flesh / steel cuts bone / steel does not cut steel,’ as Musashi said. Become steel or get cut, that’s the world you’re entering.”

  20

  THE YOUNG MEN

  Bob left the august building and headed through the parklands where dozens of brightly colored stalls, selling books and DVDs and yakitori, had been set up. He saw a cop car and thought, Do they know who I am? Am I being watched?

  The trip in had been easy enough. Al Ino, through his intelligence contacts, was able to come up with a passport for Bob; soon enough, that led to a whole new identity, complete with driver’s license, Social Security number, and fake pictures in his wallet; he sold some bonds and put $100,000 in a fund in the name of a Mr. Thomas Lee, of Oakland, California, traveling money accessible anywhere in the world with credit card and PIN number. It went without a hitch; Bob Lee Swagger didn’t exist anymore.

  Now that he’d done the first thing, he had to figure out how to locate the cop at the airport, how to approach him, how to secure his cooperation.

  Yet already he was exhausted. Where had his energy gone? Was he too old for this? And a week of sword lessons: what could be learned in a week? What was the point?

  He looked about for a western-style restaurant. He walked for a bit, leaving the somber, grand building and its parklands, and entered the crazed utopia of modern Tokyo. In time he found a Starbucks and went in and bought a seven-dollar cup of black joe.

  Gradually, the Starbucks began to fill up. The coffee was hot and strong, and he began to—

  And that’s when he noticed. The restaurant had filled up quickly enough, but with the same man. He was about twenty-five, all twenty-five of him. He wore his hair in a crew cut with a butch wax front fence; he was muscular, alert, oblivious, and yet at the same time aware. He wore square black-framed sunglasses, chinos, and a white polo shirt. They didn’t pay any attention to the lanky, older gaijin sitting there, but very quietly and skillfully surrounded him. Then Bob noticed they’d each ordered a single cup of coffee.