“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.”

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.”