Then Kenji Kishida either tired of the strain of moving at high speed or decided he wanted to see something prettier than Nissans and Mazdas playing tag at 120 kmh and the revetments of the superhighway, so he took an exit ramp. Bob easily followed him. Soon enough the houses fell away. Ahead, some mountains dominated the landscape, and rows of carefully cultivated fields lay on either side. The traffic thinned, and finally Kishida turned up a smaller road and seemed to be heading into the mountains. He still had not noticed Bob, now two hundred yards behind.

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.”