A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set

by Stephen Hunter

  He led Bob to the blank dark wall of the vault, cranked the handle, and slid the massive door open. He ducked in, gesturing Bob to follow, and Bob found himself amid yet more swords, even more beautiful, more valuable.

  “There are many great collections,” Otowa said, “but none so great as this.”

  “I am privileged,” said Bob.

  The doctor leaned and plucked one off the wall.

  “Here,” he said, handing it to Bob.

  Bob felt the electricity of the thing, the perfection of its balance, the hunger of its blade, the stunning artistry of its fabrication.

  “May I?”

  “Of course.”

  Bob turned the blade upward and cleanly drew it from the saya. The koshirae—blood red sago of black sharkskin, a gold-tinted tsuba—were magnificent, but even that magnificence was diminished by the blade.

  “That may be the most perfect blade in all Japan. It is certainly the sharpest, the strongest, the most deadly.”

  “Sir, it’s priceless.”

  “Take it. Use it. Fight with it. Possibly it gives you a slight edge. My son will recognize it. He will know its power. It is one thing that may give him pause. It is your only chance. He had a superb natural skill set, and if he’s worked hard for the past twenty years, he is indeed transcendent.”

  “I couldn’t risk losing it.”

  “Swagger-san, it was built for this purpose and no other. It is fulfilling its destiny. Were it sentient, it would petition for permission to defend you. Think nothing of its value. Think nothing of its rarity. Think only of it as your weapon.”

  “Yes, sir. A Muramasa, I take it?”

  “It is indeed. The ‘evil’ swordsmith. His was the blade—maybe even that one—in the stream in the famous story about Masamune. The leaves and twigs avoided the great Masamune’s. Muramasa’s attracted them, and it cut them flawlessly. Muramasa took pride in this when he should have felt shame. Thus his blades had a reputation for blood. They yearned to cut. They also had a penchant for seeking out members of the shogun’s family, and killing or maiming them. They were banned, rounded up, and destroyed by the shogunate, which is why they are so rare today, and that is one of the survivors. My son will know this, and know that he works for a kind of shogun. That will cloud his mind. Again, a small thing, but victory is won on small things.”

  “I thank you. I will return—”

  “No. If you kill him, then the sword will have served its purpose. Maybe that is why it came to me so many years ago. Destroy it, that’s all. Get it off the earth. Send it to hell. It came from hell, it represents hell. Use it and destroy it without a second thought.”

  “I will, Dr. Otowa.”

  “That sword is my blessing. Now please go. I wish to be alone.”

  40

  THE BIG SHOTS

  “You’re sure,” said the Shogun.

  “As sure as I can be. I told you, Lord, this is a determined and creative adversary. But now we have him.”

  “I worry that at the park, it will be difficult to control. It will spill into a mess, and the news stations and the—”

  “I will have ten men concealed. They are experts at camouflage. Ninja, almost. Not really, but close. I myself will be there. It’s early, we control access to the park. No one will interfere. Certain suggestions have been made to the police to stay away. It’s very, very early, barely dawn. We control the terrain. He has no choice but to come, if he loves the child, and he loves the child. I saw it in his eyes. At a signal I can get forty more men in the park almost instantly. He has some skill, I admit. But not enough to overcome me and certainly not enough to overcome fifty men. That only happens in movies.”

  “Suppose he brings—”

  “He can’t. He won’t have time. He cannot locate us until we call him. He will have to travel at extreme speed across Tokyo. We will be watching all the roads as he approaches and will know if he has allies. But he can’t get allies close enough in time. It’s a very solid plan.”

  “The child—”

  “The child must die. She’s seen too much. It is a small matter. It means nothing.”

  “It’s just that I—”

  “Lord, it means nothing.”

  “Yes, Kondo-san.”

  They sat in the living room of the mansion next to Kiyosumi Gardens. It was nearly midnight. Kondo had spent the day going over his preparations. He had his own trained men; he had his kobun Nii, his most trusted fellow, virtually connected by tether to the child; he had forty toughened soldiers from Boss Otani, ready to die for him. No, they weren’t the best and they preferred to fight with Kalashnikov and Makarov than katana and wakizashi, but they would still rather die than yield, and would kill at the drop of a hand. And, if necessary, he had plenty of Kalashnikovs and Makarovs.

  Still, the Shogun was nervous, Kondo could tell. He sat there, licking his lips, his face glowing in the light of the fire, swallowing, twitching occasionally, trying to control his nerves. He wasn’t so brilliant at this kind of thing. The Shogun didn’t even need to be there, but he had insisted. Still, regret seemed to cloud his thought.

  “I just wish all this hadn’t happened,” he said petulantly. “We are running out of time.”

  Pornographer! thought Kondo. There was no point in explaining to him that what happens is what happens. Feelings about what is past are silly; they contribute nothing; one must only look at the now.

  “Lord, I have made all the arrangements. The koshirae will be completed in record time. The hard part was the polishing. Getting that done—and I understand the old man did a superb job, maybe his best—was the key. You will have the sword in plenty of time to announce it, to enjoy the prestige and attention, to empower your plans. All the things you desire will be delivered to you, exactly as planned. This unforeseen business—a trouble, I admit—is unfortunate, but we have it under control.”

  “The stroke of the child. It was brilliant. We went from losers to winners in that single instant.”

  “Strategy is very important.”

  “You are a genius, Kondo-san. You will be well rewarded.”

  “My service is my reward. But I’ll still take that four million dollars. Tomorrow at this time I will have both my fortune and my opponent’s head. I think I’ll take a nice vacation.”

  “Try Los Angeles. I’ll give you some numbers. Fuck some blond white women. Very enjoyable. Once you do, you’ll see why only certain Japanese should be allowed that pleasure. It would corrupt the general public and soon the concept of ‘Japanese’ would be gone! We must protect the sexual powers of our men, the submission of our women, and the purity of our—”

  You had to stop him or he’d go on for hours and Kondo wanted a little sleep. “I look forward to it,” he said.

  Miwa went to pour himself another Scotch. He watched the amber fluid splash across the ice cubes. Then he raised his eyes and peered out the window, where the many spotlights created an intense and impenetrable zone of illumination.

  “Kondo-san,” he said, “look! It’s snowing.”

  41

  THE STAGING

  An observer could be forgiven for thinking that indeed a kendo club had commandeered the banquet hall of the Kasaibashi Hotel on Kasaibashi Road a block from Kiyosumi Gardens in East Tokyo. The young men were husky, handsome, quiet, athletic, graceful, and all carried kendo bags, long enough to accommodate shinai, the bamboo sword of the sport. Other bagged gear surely contained the armor kendoists wore, and the appearance of medical technicians merely confirmed the impression, as kendo can be a rough encounter, leaving abrasions, bruises, sometimes even cuts. Their coaches, a few years older, were also husky, handsome, quiet, athletic, and graceful. All wore black jumpsuits under sweatshirts, all carried black watch caps wedged into their belts, all spoke only to friends if at all. So many young men—but they had to be a team because there was no joshing, no horsing around, no shoving or needling. Certainly, a big match loomed ahead.

  The obse
rver would have wondered about the gaijin who seemed to be some kind of consultant to them, for he enjoyed the confidence of the older fellows and soon took over the pep talk from the head coach. But what to make of the slim, beautiful woman in glasses, who also seemed to enjoy everyone’s confidence? Was she a kendoist? She was wearing blue jeans, New Balance sport shoes, and a black turtleneck, almost a kendoist’s outfit. And yet again, what of the final touch, the four Korean men, much squarer in face and blockier in build than their Japanese counterparts, who spoke to no one and hovered close to the woman? All in all, it was a very strange gathering.

  But of course there was no observer. The Kasaibashi was a two-star business joint well away from tourist areas. At midnight, when this strange confab began arriving in ones or twos, checking in with a fellow who looked as much like a sergeant as a coach, only a single employee was on duty at the hotel, a night clerk who doubled as a telephone operator. He was earnestly advised to mind his own business by someone whose seriousness of purpose impressed him. And his switchboard was quietly disconnected from the outside. All this was done with utmost politeness but, at the same time, utmost sincerity.

  In the big room, the men eventually assembled before a blackboard, each silent, each ready, until at 3 a.m., the meeting commenced, the head coach welcoming them, promising them that this would be their night, the night they had so long awaited, the night when their team would triumph. The men seemed, like all men in preathletic stress, tight and nervous and hungry at once.

  Finally the gaijin stood in front of the men. Hmmm, what would a gaijin know about kendo? But this one held their attention, even if he didn’t seem to be talking about kendo.

  “Last-minute check,” he said, speaking in an English that more than half understood, but which was translated by the woman with great technical fluency in near real time. “Medics, there are medics here, Major Fujikawa?”

  The major nodded, as three men raised their hands.

  “You’ve all got O-neg, plenty of needle and thread, plenty of QuiKlot, plenty of clamps and transfusion equipment? Wounds tonight will be cuts. You medics, I hope you’ve been practicing clamping and sewing, that’s what it’ll be all about.”

  The appropriate men nodded.

  “Okada-san,” he said.

  The woman handed out Xerox sheets.

  She said in Japanese, “That’s the latest satellite photo of the target, taken approximately six hours ago. Don’t ask who took it or how I got it. You can see the layout of the building, the layout of the walls. We have ID’d approximately fifty men on site. They seem to be quartered in the basement, because they go in and out of one lower-story side door. They were all inside as of nineteen hundred hours. The front gate is locked. You can also see that we’ve indicated by marker your approach to the target. It’s no more than half a mile from here.”

  “Let me run through this one more time,” said the gaijin. “You’ve been briefed, but let’s take it by the steps.”

  He ran through it again: how in small groups the men would infiltrate Kiyosumi Gardens, come out at the far end, and gather in two groups on the north and south sides of the wall around the Miwa mansion. The four snipers would take up positions on the walls. At that point Susan and Bob would approach in her RX-8, park next to the west wall midway between the two teams. The signal was a loud blast from the horn, and then the men would proceed over the walls.

  “Captain Tanada takes the rear team over the south wall. Major Fujikawa will go over from the left of the gate, the north wall. I don’t want to breach the gate because I don’t want to use explosives, and if there are sentries inside with firearms, their first instinct will be to zero in on the gate. As they look at the gate, the snipers should find them in the windows and take them out. Okada-san and I will go over from our position on the east wall.

  “You get to the house, then you toss your flash-bangs: each window, each door. I don’t want you entering the house because you don’t know the layout and the arrangement of the furniture or the closets, and Okada-san and I will be inside, and I don’t want us getting all mixed up. With the flash-bangs, those guys will come pouring out.

  “I should tell you: the one feature of a sword fight is a lot of blood. It ain’t like no movie. There will be blood everywhere. You cannot cut with katana hard into the torso without severing major arteries. It will be slippery and sloppy. You cannot allow yourself to be shocked by it. When you cut him, he’ll bleed bad. If he don’t go down, cut him again, hard, and he will. Then move on. If you are cut, disengage, get your bandage tight on it, and fall back to the medics, who will be the last over the wall. They will get you clamped and get an O-neg line into you. You have a lot of blood. You can lose half of it before you pass out. If you see a lot of your own blood, do not panic. Move swiftly to the medics and you will be all right.

  “There is one man you should avoid. This man is called Kondo Isami. He will be older, about forty-five. His skills are beyond yours, believe me. If you see him, do not fight him; if he means to escape, let him escape. If he is guarding someone—I’m imagining he will be guarding Miwa, the big boss—then you surround them but do not attempt to take him down. He will kill six or seven of you before you can finish him and those are unacceptable casualties. Simply hold him at bay; we’ll get the snipers in quickly, and if they won’t surrender we’ll shoot them. Or tell me where he is. If it comes to it, I will handle him. I’ve done a lot of fighting in my life and I am not afraid to fight.

  “Finally, remember our priorities: saving Miko Yano is first, justice for the man who murdered her father and family is second, and this fellow Kondo is third. Okada-san and I will find the little girl. Okada-san has night vision and we will penetrate the house first; we think the kid’s probably in a cluster of bedrooms on the second floor. After we get the girl out safely, I will be looking for Kondo; Major Fujikawa, who is in charge of the ground forces, will be looking for Miwa. Captain Tanada, I think, will just be looking for heads to take.”

  There was laughter.

  “Now, I just want to thank you. I am a stranger to this country and the men of this platoon have made me feel at home. I know I am among professionals. Our interests are the same: justice for Philip Yano and his family, and life for his surviving daughter. The people who took the first and threaten the last are a half-mile away, sleeping the sleep of the wicked, confident that they own the world. This is the night they find out different.”

  After that, it just seemed to happen without much drama. The men, clutching their kendo bags, pulling on their black watch caps, began to form up into the two-or three-man teams. The medics with the larger bags of gear fell in to the rear. The staff people—Fujikawa, Sergeant Major Kanda, Captain Tanada, and Bob and Susan—were at the front, looking at the map one last time.

  Bob and Susan sat in her car outside the hotel, watching as the last of the teams moseyed out and disappeared into the night. It was about ten minutes from go-time. Bob looked at his watch.

  Suddenly a buzz filled the empty space.

  “Shit,” Susan said. She pulled out her cell phone, switched it off.

  “Your date is annoyed because you stiffed him?” Bob said.

  “My boss is pissed because I stiffed him. That’s the fifteenth time he’s called in the last two hours. He’s also sent me ten text messages. He wants to see me right now.”

  “Christ.”

  “He can’t reach me. That doesn’t please him. He’s mad, he’s desperate, and tomorrow I get fired.”

  “You could go now.”

  “No way. If my career’s going south, I want to be there for the fifth act. I want to see it all turn sour. Now, Swagger?”

  “Yes?”

  “Some questions, all right? No bullshit. I have never bullshitted you. We may both be dead in twenty minutes, so no bullshit.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Swagger, your little drama is about to come off. You made it happen. Subtly, carefully, skillfully, with a great deal
of sound planning, you’ve got a career CIA officer and fifty Japanese Self-Defense Force paratroopers about to raid a yakuza strong point, in contravention to the basic laws of both groups. It shouldn’t be possible, but you made it happen. The question is simple: why?”

  “Why? Well, I cared a great deal about Philip Yano. I felt involved because I gave him the sword.”

  “Bullshit. That’s what you’ve been saying, but I see now you’re too smart for that. You think things through too carefully. That’s just a cover story. You know that giving him that sword was pure chance. You could not have known what the consequences were, and you were not responsible for them. You know that. And another odd thing: why did you work so hard to give him that sword? You told me you went all over America looking for the sword. So even before you’d stayed with his family, the Yanos meant something special to you. What, Swagger? Tell me.”

  Swagger considered.

  “All right,” he finally said. “I was raised not to talk of such things and I never have. But you deserve an answer, Okada-san.”

  He looked off. The snow was falling more heavily, sifting down through the trees, muffling the earth, driving most of the traffic away. Swagger thought of the men moving through the dark, creeping toward their destination, violence in the air, another night of war. So much war in the Swagger family.

  “My father,” he finally said, “never talked about the war. He was a great man, one of very few surviving five-invasion marines. He hit five beaches, was shot up seven times, once close to death, but he kept going back. Finally, two days after the fifth beach, Iwo Jima, he won the Medal of Honor. I suppose he liked having won that medal and the respect it earned him. But he never, ever bragged on it or mentioned it, and he told me once, ‘You are never to tell anyone about that medal.’ That was very important to him.

  “But one night in nineteen fifty-five, a few weeks before he died, he was out on the porch talking with a friend of his, the county prosecutor, a wonderful old goat named Sam Vincent. The two of them were talking about the war. Sam was running himself down and Dad said, ‘Mr. Sam, you think I am such a goddamned hero and you are a failure because of Thebes. Let me tell you a thing or two and maybe you don’t know so much and things ain’t so clear. You know that big medal I won in the war?’