Enzan: The Far Mountain (21 page)

“Ya know what I get, Connor? I get the fact that sometimes you are so into this martial arts stuff that it blinds you to the obvious. I mean, come on. If the Miyazaki wanted to lay their hands on the chick, these people are wired through the diplomatic corps … they could have had some calls made and someone from state would reach out and the problem would have been solved. But they didn’t do that because it would have raised flags and ruined his chances for the job. So what do they do? They reach out to you in the hopes that you can get her roped in, but do it on the QT.”

“Which I did,” I protested.

“Yes,” he agreed wearily. “Through some sort of complete moronic convergence you manage to pull this off.”

“So then what’s the problem? I did good, right?”

There was silence on the line as if Mickey were completely stupefied by the comment. “Buddy boy,” he told me, “since when is it ever just about doing good?” The sadness in his voice reminded me he had been a cop for more than twenty years.

“I don’t get it, Mick.”

That comment seemed to revive him somewhat. “Of course ya don’t get it.” His voice was rising. “That’s the point.”

“I got her,” I said. “She’s out of the clutches of Lim and safe and sound. Nobody knows where we are.”

He laughed. “Connor, everybody knows where you are.”

“How so?”

“Because you are only ever in a few places. Most of the time, you’re way up your own ass. If you’re not home, you’re at the dojo. When’s the last time you taught at NYU?”

“It’s been awhile,” I had to admit. I had been what’s known as an adjunct professor there. Overeducated and underpaid, I worked on a class-by-class basis. Like all adjuncts, I was cheap and docile labor, but I’d gained a certain notoriety from some of the scrapes I’d been in. The dean eventually thought my continued employment might not be contributing toward the image the university was trying to project. So the sputtering little biplane of my academic career had carved a painfully erratic but low arc across the university skyline and eventually augured in with a muffled thump.

“Yeah,” Mickey commented. “So I gathered. One less variable to consider. So if you’re not at home, not at the dojo, and not at NYU, and not in transit between any of these points, where are you?” I took a breath to answer and he interrupted me with mockery. “No, please, let me guess … you’re at that Zen place upstate where Yamashita spends so much time.”

“I’m that obvious?”

“Connor, you’re off on some wild-goose chase up in the Poconos and then are trying to head home in the worst snowstorm in a century. They’re closing the highways; Amtrak and every other form of mass transit is frozen in place. The entire East Coast is in bed and pulling the covers over its head. Where else ya gonna go?”

“I guess …” I said grudgingly.

“And here’s the kicker,” he said, and his voice once again began to grow in intensity. “Once they lost track of you, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out your next step. They just stake out likely places and wait for you.”

“You think they’re waiting for me here?” The possibility rocked me. I had thought the monastery was going to be the place we could hide for a time from all the different storms swirling around us. But the storm had stranded a number of newcomers. Could some of them be waiting and watching for me? I remembered the ease with which the ex-medic had handled the gun in my pocket. Was he one of them?

“If it was me, I’d a had someone there,” Mickey said with total conviction.

“Shit,” I breathed over the phone.

“Yeah. Shit. But there’s good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news?”

“Whoever is up there is probably just someone to watch and notify the Koreans when you show up. Whoever it is probably won’t try something on their own.”

“OK … bad news?”

“Bad news is they’ve already made the call and the Koreans will be trying to get to you.”

“In this weather?”

Mickey laughed. “Connor, they’re North Koreans. Weather like this, I’m not even sure they’d bother to put on a hat.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” he echoed. “Although I think they’re gonna have a hard time getting to you anytime soon. The city is closed down and nobody’s being allowed on the bridges.”

“So, good news, yes?”

My brother sighed, as if I had finally worn him out. “Good news, then bad news. Then good news. But now …”

“There’s more bad news.”

“In my experience, there is never a shortage of bad news. And here’s the thing I want you to hear clearly, Connor.” The fuming and rage were gone from his tone and he was speaking clearly and quietly. You rarely heard Mickey this way and when you did, it meant something very, very serious was about to happen. And in my brother’s world, serious things were always dangerous things.

“The blackmail scheme has been blown all to shit, since now we know about it.”

“That’s good, right? It only works if there’s a secret to be kept.”

“It’s good on one level, but not for you.”

“Whattaya mean?”

“Right now, you got these Korean goons trying to erase their tracks. If they get blown as operating here, they get sent home. In disgrace.”

“To Pyongyang,” I breathed.

“The armpit of East Asia,” he agreed. “Ruled by a bunch of maniacs with an intelligence service that has never bought into the whole ‘forgive and forget’ approach to management.”

It began to dawn on me then. “So they would seriously like all knowledge of this little scheme to … go away.”

He gave his evil cackle. “Go away … you are so cute. These guys are fucking serious, Connor. Killing serious. And they’ll try to eliminate everyone who’s a direct link to the scheme.”

“Lim,” I said. “Chie …”

“Forget Lim,” he told me. “Forget the chick. Worry about yourself.”

“Unh,” I said.
Burke, the master of the quick comeback
.

“That’s all you’ve got to say? Unh? Do you realize what you’ve stumbled into? And how really serious this is? I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. After all this time … all the other shit I’ve had to bail you out of. You keep living in this weird little fantasy world. Yamashita and the martial arts and the code of the warrior. And now you’re in way over your head. It’s the North Koreans and these guys are not foolin’ around.” He had slowly ramped himself up into a new rage. But he got it under control and his last words were tight and precise and scary because they were so quiet and so matter of fact. “You really piss me off, Connor. And do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because,” he screamed into the phone, “they’re coming to get you and I’m stuck here in this fucking storm and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get up there in time to help. YOU ASSHOLE.”

The line went dead—probably overwhelmed by brotherly tough love.

Chapter 21

Mori’s Journal

We were comrades, Rinsuke, but there were always parts of you that you tried to keep hidden and inaccessible, even to me. But truly, while you were in some ways distant, you were never hard to understand. We returned to the training hall, numb and only foggily aware of the whirl of activity surrounding us. Most thought it was the aftereffects of the incident and the storm. But I knew better. We never spoke of it, but the looks I had seen pass between you and Chika-hime told me all I needed to know. The connection created between the two of you was powerful. I imagine it took all your discipline to hide it from sight.

At the time, I wondered what this would cost you, what price you would pay for the love affair between the two of you. Now, of course, I know. But at that time I feared if you two were ever together again, the world would see what I had seen and you would be destroyed. For the relentless machine of the dynastic ambitions of the Miyazaki, combined with the stone-hard honor of the Imperial House, would crush you both and grind you up. I was sure of it. You could not see it, lost in your love and your misery. But I could see clearly.

You moved through the next few days in a type of trance, seemingly engaged in the mundane challenges of movement and speech, but on closer inspection you were a man who had removed himself from any true engagement in the here and now.

The story of the North Korean attempt to kidnap the princess grabbed the public’s attention. The details of our fight at the inn were embellished in the telling until I barely recognized it.

Takano drank in the attention, smugly nodding at the wonder with which our exploits were greeted. His statements were humble ones, but I caught him in more than a few unguarded moments. At those times his mouth would tighten in a grim, satisfied line and his eyes would gleam with the sure knowledge that his fortunes had been made. It was, after all, his skill that had shaped the two trainees who fought off the kidnappers. This was how he spun his version of the story. Within weeks, the leading families of Japan were begging him to accept their sons as trainees.

But the greatest accolades were saved for Miyazaki himself. In this version of the story, his selfless act of leaping in front of one of the Korean gunmen was what allowed the two of us to rescue her. It was a tale rich in scenes for public consumption: the loving husband willing to sacrifice himself for his bride; the scion of a distinguished family willing to show how he valued honor and duty more than life itself. If those who knew him best wondered at the characterization of Miyazaki as a paragon, they never spoke publicly. Nobody ever protested that he was, in fact, an arrogant and cruel man, a selfish human being and an abusive husband. No voice ever registered complete amazement that he would do such a selfless thing. No person ever speculated on the real motives for an act that seemed so at odds with the personality of the real Miyazaki.

He himself could shed no light on his actions. The doctors would later describe it as trauma-induced amnesia: Miyazaki could remember nothing leading up to and including his act of courage. He never would. But he held on to the story tightly; even as the diagnosis of paralysis was delivered, he wrapped himself in the tale of his honor.

You and I listened to the other trainees talk of it, but refused to discuss the matter. We left the story as it had been presented in the newspapers. For you, I imagine it felt like the final disastrous event, the keystone that fell into place and locked your destinies into its structure.

You and the princess had both hoped to be rid of him, but Miyazaki lived. Worse than that, he had sacrificed himself to save us. The actions demanded respect. And if it was a reaction privately tinged with stunned incredulity that so flawed a human being could rise to such heroism, it demanded to be honored nonetheless. You saw that. Whatever wild hopes each of you may have harbored about your future, they were smothered in the fact that Miyazaki’s courage now bound the princess to him forever. And you were honor bound to agree.

Two nights later, you came to me. You were dressed for travel, a small scuffed suitcase stuffed with clothing at your feet along with the canvas bag that held your training weapons. Our conversation was stilted; there was so much to say and few words could carry so heavy a load. You told me you were leaving and I asked where you would go.

“South,” you said. “Away.”

“Tokyo?” I asked.

Your face was rigid with shock. “Never.” It was where they would live together. Miyazaki and his wife. You seemed as if you were afraid the mere fact of being in the same city with her would be too much to bear.

You gave me a note for her, wrapped in a bamboo tube. You asked me to see that it reached her hands. That only her eyes would see it. I only nodded. We were seated in a small, dim room and darkness was falling. I lifted the note in its container and marveled at how something so light could, in fact, be weighed down with so much importance. I looked at you. Your eyes glittered. Perhaps it was tears. Perhaps just a trick of the light. I set the note down in front of me and bowed low to you. I tried to make that bow sum up the sadness I felt, the understanding of what you were doing and why, and the deep regret I had.

When I straightened up, you were gone.

I delivered the note to your princess, of course. And from that moment we had a special bond. She never asked me about you or where you had gone. She only asked that I watch out for you.

Which I have done for all these years.

Before the year ended, the princess gave birth to a boy. People thought it must have been a comfort to Miyazaki, one last gift from a time before his body was strapped to a wheelchair. I saw the child some time later and thought I recognized a familiar shape to the head. The princess caught my eye and we said nothing. There was no need.

Your son grew up in that household, never knowing of his origins in the storm.

But I knew, and I carried that guilty knowledge with me over the years. The princess and I kept the secret locked tight, knowing family honor required it. But she had charged me with caring for you, Rinsuke, and I did. I entered the service of the Imperial House and used my connections to smooth the way for you in various places. I eventually brought you into the Kunaicho as one of my most trusted assistants. You might wonder whether I simply did it for her, but that would not be entirely true. You were, in fact, tremendously skilled, and we put your abilities to good use over the years. This you know.

But if the truth be told, and now there is no reason to hide it, I did it for myself.

I had hoped for great things in my life. But when I saw you, I knew I could never be your equal. It was not simply your skill, but your sense of self. I watched you struggle against Takano’s will, against his abuse, and triumph. If some of his trainees thought he was a god, I looked at you, Rinsuke, and saw a true master in the making. And when you fell in love with the princess, as sudden and inexplicable and unlikely as the event may have seemed, I feared for your happiness. For this love could never be allowed to blossom. I knew that.

The North Korean plot, in an odd karmic way, could have been a blessing. If we could rescue the princess, and Miyazaki could perhaps fall as a casualty …

It seems cold-blooded, does it not? But even then, I had the ability to spin events to serve varied purposes. He was a despicable human being; if he fell, the world would be better off. But mostly, I feared he would see what I had seen, and know that you and the princess were in love. I had no illusions about how he would react. He would destroy you and her life would be an endless round of humiliation and abuse. His death, I decided, was a necessity. It would not make you happy, but it would at least keep you both safe.

Understand my intentions were good.

I laugh as I write that line. It may well be the epitaph for us all. Indeed, it may be the only one possible. We struggle and plan our way through this life, staggering under the weight of duty and desire. What does it get us? At the end, who of us can look up and know that in that last moment, our actions have created more good than suffering?

I know I cannot.

But I do know in that moment at the inn, I wished you both the best. I saw a chance to rid the world of an odious presence and perhaps shelter your love from the harsh storms of a demanding world. In the end, I failed. Miyazaki did not die, but emerged a hero. His wife was bound to him in honor, reminded every day of his sacrifice by the sight of his wheelchair. Two young lovers forever parted. And your child was raised as another man’s son.

Forgive me. It seemed such a simple thing.

When we burst into that room at the inn, I saw that your plan would not succeed: sometimes, like our master, I could experience real clarity at moments of danger. The Korean gunmen would begin firing at any moment. What could I do? In that second I made the decision. I refused to let either of us sacrifice ourselves for such a man. So I did what I thought best.

I had come to care for you and the princess too much. Forced to choose, it was an easy action. You may say it was a move without honor, but I think love is stronger than honor. And in my own way, I loved you, and the princess. In any event, I have spent the rest of my life atoning for my actions in that one second, serving the Imperial House. And yet I will always regret what it did to your lives.

Miyazaki did not jump in front of the gunman to save you, or me, or his wife. He was not thinking of honor or sacrifice or duty. He was not thinking of these things at all.

The truth is simpler than that, a straightforward act that fell into the still water of our lives and sent waves pulsing through it, changing things forever.

I pushed him.