A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set

by Stephen Hunter

  The road was empty, climbing slightly through rich pine forests. Bob had never seen a more beautiful and serene range of hills. He knew he’d never have a better chance. The guy might join a heavier-traveled road in seconds.

  He gunned up into fifth gear, goosed the bike, and flew beyond a hundred miles an hour. The wind beat against him and he closed the distance like a shot, zooming by Kishida, feeling the man’s sudden start of panic. Then, cruelly, he cut Kishida off, eating up his space, driving him onto the shoulder. The dust spun up in clouds as Kishida struggled with the treacherous loss of traction, got tangled up in gears and throttle and brake sequence, almost lost control, almost in fact died, but somehow managed to brake hard and bring the bike down in the dust.

  Bob fishtailed to a halt, punched down his kickstand, and ran to the man lying next to the fallen, still chugging bike. He shut down the engine and saw through Kishida’s shaded visor the man’s fear, panic, confusion, and hesitation. Kishida tried to rise. Bob put a left-footed dragon’s kick into the side of the helmet—hadn’t done that in years!—and clocked him hard. Kishida fell down, slipped trying to get up, ripped at his helmet, then grabbed at his zippered jacket, perhaps to reach a gun or a tanto, but Bob kicked him in the helmet with another wheelhouse dragon’s sweep. That put him down solidly, and he lay, shaking stars and spiderwebs out of his head, trying to figure what the hell was—

  Bob jumped him, pressing his knee against the squirming man’s chest. He pulled the zipper down, saw the shaft of a Glock, pulled it, dropped the mag, racked the slide to toss the chambered round but there wasn’t one, then tossed it twenty feet away. Kishida recoiled in horror. Bob yanked the man’s helmet off.

  “You stay put if you know what’s good for you. I’ll smack you around even more if I have to!”

  “I am a police officer. You are in big—”

  “Shut up. I ask the questions, you answer ’em. That’s how this game is going to be played. The sword.”

  “I don’t—”

  “The sword, goddammit.”

  “What sword?”

  “The sword that bought you this bike. The sword that paid all your debts. The sword that bought you some new toy in your vault. The sword that’s going to buy you teacher porno for the next ten years.”

  Kishida said nothing. His eyes suddenly went distant and he looked off, thinking. Then, finally, he looked back.

  “I know who you are. I knew you’d come.”

  “It don’t matter a lick who or what I am or who or what you know. What matters is the sword. You were the one who spotted it. Who’d you tell? How did it happen, how was it set up, what was the deal, the connection? Don’t give me any bullshit. I know more than you could guess.”

  “Please, I had no idea those people would be killed. You have to believe that. I never realized…I just had no idea.”

  “So you knew it was going to the Yanos.”

  “No, but the collectors were talking afterward how some American at the site of the fire was screaming about a stolen sword. That’s when I saw how it could have been. I am ashamed. I should have committed seppuku, but I lack the courage.”

  “You and me both, pal. Just tell me: who reached you? How did it happen? Who was on the receiving end of the information? How was it set up?”

  “I can’t tell you. Go ahead, kill me. If I tell you, I’m dead. It’s the same thing.”

  “You don’t want to die. Not with that pretty bike lying there and brand-new swords in your vault. It ain’t worth dying for, believe me. And I don’t want to kill you. Too much paperwork. Tell me. Talk to me, Kenji, goddammit.”

  The man took a deep breath.

  “I was approached by a low-ranking yakuza some six months ago. He gave me a hundred thousand yen. ‘For what?’ I said. He said, ‘Just for keeping your eye out.’ He knew that I was a collector, an ex–kendo champion, something of a scholar of the sword, and at Narita I was always the one called to inspect and judge blades that unsuspecting tourists brought in or took out without proper documentation, and that I was also asked to consult on sword thefts, insurance values, that sort of thing. So he knew that I was at a kind of crossroads of sword information.”

  “He had a specific sword in mind?”

  “No. He couldn’t have known what would or wouldn’t come in, if anything. But they were looking for something big, something that would make a splash. They turn up now and then as more and more swords are returned, as people look at the things they have in their trunks, as collectors and foreign buyers become more aggressive and pay more and more. Samurai is bigger than Japan. Samurai is international now.”

  “So you saw the sword?”

  “It was lying on a desk, just in from Customs. A fellow was typing up the license. I knew in a second it had historicity to it. I made a fuss and demanded to take charge. I told them it resembled a certain stolen sword and I had to make some phone calls. Once I had it in my office, I had some trouble getting the hilt off. Someone seemed to have poured some black tar or something into the mekugiana and I couldn’t budge it. Fortunately, I had my kit. I was able to knock the pin out with the brass hammer. There was even a poem written by someone, I don’t know who. ‘Moon of hell,’ that I remember. But I was too excited about the sword. I didn’t recognize the smith’s name, Norinaga. But I picked up the crest, looked at it through my loupe, and realized at once it was the Asano mon. I recognized the koto shape, which put it in the proper time period. It was a thrill. It was all I could do to keep from jumping up and down. It was only later when I researched the smith’s name that I realized what it had to be. If I had known that—well, I don’t know.”

  “So you called?”

  “Well, first I had to make the imprint of the tang. I did that quickly. Then I made the call. It was a young man’s voice, husky, strong, not the yakuza I’d first talked to. He heard me describe it and left the line for a second or so. He called someone. Another voice came on the line. He asked me to describe it. He was very knowledgeable. He even knew that the Asano family crest had changed over the years and had me recheck it to make certain that the one I had was right for the time. I told him the smith’s name. He got very quiet. I said, ‘What do you want me to do? Confiscate it?’ ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘fax me the oshigata and stall. Take an hour or two. Let the gaijin wait. Walk by him several times and note his height, his weight, his demeanor. Do you understand? We need to know what he looks like.’ So that’s what I did. I actually walked by you two or three times, and once sat near you. You didn’t notice me. I could tell you were angry. Then I went and called them and gave a detailed description. He had me wait another few minutes and then finally okayed the next move. I reassembled the sword and went to my supervisor and told him I had been mistaken and that the license was fine and to tell you how moved we were that you were returning it.”

  “And that’s the time they set up to tail me to the Yanos.”

  “I don’t know. I never heard from them again. Two weeks later a package arrived. I opened it and found three million yen. Not a fortune but enough to pay my debts, buy a shin-shinto that had caught my eye. I still had half of it left, so I bought the bike.”

  “I don’t suppose you kept the package?”

  “No, of course not, I destroyed it. I had to spend all the cash. I couldn’t put it in a bank because then I’d have to pay taxes on it and explain where I got it.”

  “Do you still have the fax number or the original number?”

  “No. I destroyed them too, after the murders.”

  “Any names, any vocal characteristics, any—”

  “I do recall one thing. When the young man went to call his master, he left the phone. But I heard the name. He called ‘Isami-sama.’”

  “Isami-sama?”

  “Isami, the name would be; sama is honorific.”

  “Did you recognize it?”

  “Any swordsman would recognize it. Kondo Isami, a great killer from the bloody past. Many duels and murders, many
bodies. A pseudonym of a fellow with a high opinion of himself. Also bespeaking a high opinion: sama. It’s an inflated honorific, higher than san. It connotes high rank or special talent, as viewed from below. The man doing the talking considers this Kondo Isami highly accomplished and is trying to ingratiate himself.”

  Bob walked over and fetched the Glock. He picked it up, punched the cartridges out of the magazine, then slammed the magazine home and handed the gun back to Kishida.

  “If I need more information, I may visit you again.”

  Kishida said, “If Kondo Isami catches you, he will make you tell where you got your information. You may be brave and resolute, but you will tell him. Then I am a dead man.”

  “No, what’s going to kill you is that damn bike you don’t run worth a damn. You better get some practice on a closed course.”

  “I get mixed up in the gears.”

  “Good way to die young and beautiful.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I am already dead.”

  “Nah.”

  “You can guarantee that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Because I’m going to find him first. I’m going to cut him down and leave him for the birds.”

  22

  YAKIBA

  She wasn’t the best. But she was fast. And she had guts. He watched her from the second row. Here in the far western suburbs, he wasn’t in an English-friendly tourist zone. There wasn’t a lot of translation around to help the rich gaijin; people lived and worked and died without much thought of Americans. So the banner above the brightly illuminated mat was untranslated, but he figured the swoop of red kanji had to say something like “Tenth Annual Women’s Kendo Semifinal Match, Kanagawa Prefecture” or some such. It was in a high school gym, like the one he’d played basketball in a thousand or so years ago, and the baskets were folded back on rollers, up near the ceiling. The light was harsh and the competitors dashed through it, blades blurred in stress and skill.

  Most were younger. Some were older. The fans were just as intense as stateside b-ball parents. She won her first bout easily, had some trouble in the second, and finally, in the semifinals, went down hard to some seventeen-year-old genius who moved so fast she made a blur seem lazy. But Susan Okada had poise and dignity. She countered the cuts and tried to get her own in, she gave ground, then advanced, she ducked, she thrust, she did everything but win. She also took two or three hard claps on the side of the mask; the sword, called a shinai, was only sliced bamboo staves held together by twine for presence but not strength, but at that speed when it hit, it had to feel like someone had pronged a huge rubber band against her head.

  When it was over, she bowed to her opponent, bowed to the referee, bowed to some kind of altar or something of kendo godhood off to one side beneath a dramatic kanji and a couple of framed photos of old Japanese guys, and finally found her way to a front-row seat, where she crashed. He watched: Boyfriend? No. Husband? No. Gals from the office? No. Nothing. She was by herself.

  She sat somewhat dully during a break in the ceremony, a towel around her neck. Her feet were still bare. She didn’t look particularly feminine; she looked like any jock in defeat, tired but secretly pleased she had done as well as she had, not really ready to leave the world of athletics and go back to a real one where victory and loss weren’t so clearly defined.

  He squirmed down and sat one seat away from her. She didn’t notice.

  “You swing a mean stick, Ms. Okada.”

  “Swagger. I thought that was you.”

  “In the flesh, big as life, twice as mean.”

  “Jesus Christ, how did you get in? You’re on the Japanese watch list and they don’t make mistakes like that.”

  “I have some friends in the business. They got me some real good papers.”

  “Do you have any idea what can happen to you?”

  “People keep telling me I’m in for a big fall.”

  “You are going to make such an unhappy inmate.”

  “Well, they gotta catch me first.”

  “If they do, I can’t do a thing for you. If you break their law, it’s tough shit, buddy. You’re in their system. Off you go. The embassy will just walk away. That’s our duty. It’s their law, we have to respect it.”

  “Just don’t call the cops, that’s all I ask. Anyhow, you seem to have picked up kendo fast. You looked good out there. I wasn’t joking. I’d hate to have you mad at me with a live blade. You’d cut me to spinach.”

  “Swagger, this is so dangerous.”

  “Let me buy you a beer. You look as if you could use one, just having been clocked by a seventeen-year-old. Damn, I hate it when that happens. There’s got to be a place around here.”

  “I’ll go shower. Tell me how it turns out.”

  “The good guys win, just like in the samurai movies.”

  “No, here. I want to see how far that little bitch who whacked me gets.”

  The match had started anew and as Bob watched, the little bitch kicked ass big-time.

  It was a working-class bar a few blocks away, and so dark and quiet no one seemed to notice the tall white guy. Most everyone sat stupefied in front of a TV showing sumo while downing mighty tin kegs of Sapporo. They found a table in the rear, thanked god there was no karaoke tonight. Finally a waiter came by and they ordered a Sapporo for the little lady and a Coke for the tall white guy.

  “Why’d you take up kendo?”

  “My father was a kendo champ many years ago here, before he went to the U.S. for medical school. So it runs in the family, I guess. Plus, I’m supposed to meet these people, understand them, provide little insights to the more important analysts when I’m not getting drunken Americans out of the Kabukicho tank. This is a good way.”

  “It’s none of my business, but no boyfriend, no husband, no—”

  “It is none of your business. I have a career. It’s enough for now. Swagger, what are you up to?”

  “I have two items of business and I need your help.”

  “You are putting me at a terrible disadvantage. My official responsibility is to turn you in, cut a deal with the Japanese, get you out of here before you do some real harm or get yourself in real trouble. I have to do that. It’s nothing personal. You seem like a decent enough guy. But there is such a thing as duty.”

  “I know about duty.”

  “I know you do. I looked carefully at your record. You left everything in Vietnam. I get it, I respect it, it moves me. But I cannot let you get in trouble and I cannot let you screw things up for our country over here. You understand that?”

  “Sure. I understand. But let me just tell you a thing or two. Then you decide what to do.”

  “Oh, this should be rich.”

  He told her the story, his assumptions and where they’d led him, leaving out only his quiet alliance with the Japanese Self-Defense Force airborne boys. He ended with the motorcycle adventure and the admission of the police officer.

  She was silent for a while.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said. “Maybe he just said that to please you. You’d damned near killed him, you were sitting on his chest like a baboon, you’d technically assaulted him so you’d committed about your twenty-third felony, and since he was Japanese he was used to indirection, politeness, lowered voices, discretion. You probably scared him so much he would have said anything to get you out of his face.”

  “Maybe so. But how did he know about the two sword identifiers before I told him? He knew. If nothing else, that proves the sword was valuable and not some piece of war junk. If it was valuable, the whole thing swings into line. You know how nuts these people are about swords. In Dr. Otowa’s office I felt like I was visiting the pope. It’s a religion.”

  Again she looked off.

  “Look, give me a few more days,” he said. “And just a little help, okay? I won’t break any more laws or beat anybody up or chase them with a motorcycle.”

  “What is it?”


  “The officer. He said he heard the kid on the other end of the phone call somebody ‘Isami-sama.’ Kondo Isami. He said that was the name of a great swordsman and killer. Anyhow, I need to talk to somebody who knows yakuza. I have to find out who this guy who calls himself ‘Kondo Isami’ is. I can’t just walk into a cop station and ask to see the file on Kondo Isami. You must have a contact somewhere, a cop, someone in the media, some spook or something, someone who knows someone who would know this stuff. If this Kondo is a real guy, if he has a past, if he fits, then we’ve got something, at least a next step. If he’s nobody, if it’s nothing, I’m on the first plane home. I tried, I failed.”

  “No more felonies. No bull-nose macho Marine Corps bullshit. Don’t call in any napalm strikes.”

  “No napalm.”

  “Call me at my office tomorrow afternoon. I may have something for you. You can stay out of trouble till then?”

  “Sure.”

  “Take a steam bath or something?”

  “Sure.”

  “And you said you had other business. Two pieces. That was one.”

  “The child.”

  “Miko?”

  “Yeah. I have to know. What’s happening with her?”

  “She’s in a hospital. There are few orphanages in Japan. Orphaned children go to relatives. But there are no relatives left. So the social services people put her in a Catholic children’s hospital. She’s not doing well. There’s no one for her. She lost everything one night, and now she sleeps on a cot. She thinks the Tin Man is going to come and rescue her, poor thing. I haven’t figured out who the Tin Man is.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  “So it goes on the wicked planet Earth.”

  “Nobody visits her?”

  “Not anymore.”