where they have her.”
“They can be found in ten minutes.”
“Come on.”
“Maybe five.”
“Swagger, are you off the wagon again? How on earth would you-”
“I didn’t say I could find them. I couldn’t find them. But I know somebody who could.”
“Who would that be?”
“You, Okada-san.”
She just looked at him.
“I’m guessing assistant head of station, chief of operations, Central Intelligence Agency, Tokyo Embassy. Code Name: SCREAMING BITCH.”
“Christ,” she said.
“You are so Agency, it’s written all over you. You must think I’m as dumb as I look and sound. I’ve been around you guys all my life. I worked with the Agency to recover a Sov sniper rifle in ’Nam back in ’seventy-three. I helped the Agency with its housekeeping in the matter of a deputy director named Ward Bonson who wasn’t exactly who he said he was six years ago. So I know Agency.”
“My code name isn’t SCREAMING BITCH,” she said.
“I know. I was trying to be funny.”
“It’s MARTHA STEWART. I hate it, but there you have it.”
“Some jerk at headquarters hung that on you?”
“He did. I’ve made some enemies.”
“You must be good, then. Anyhow, here’s how I figure it. You tell me how close I am. This whole thing has been Agency from the start. The object was to find out who killed Philip Yano and his family. Because Philip Yano was your man and always had been. He was getting you the Japanese stuff on a target like North Korea or China.”
“Something like that.”
“That’s why he had such a good career. That’s why he got all the choice American schools, and he got the big job in Iraq, and got to go into battle finally. They even postponed his retirement for him to lead his men. And he did well, except he lost an eye.”
“He was a very fine man. I had the privilege of running him during his last three operational years. He never betrayed his country, and he served ours brilliantly. We were very lucky to have him on the team.”
“Then, two years into his retirement, he gets whacked, and so does his family. Now, you have a problem, a big problem. Who killed Philip Yano? Has your outfit been penetrated? Did someone outside the need-to-know list figure it out? Did the Chinese kill him? Did the North Koreans? Did a disaffected Japanese group kill him? Or, always a possibility, could it have nothing to do with his career in your business? Could it just be random shit going down, the way it always does in the wicked, wicked world? Things are made more urgent by the fact the Japanese themselves don’t seem too eager to solve the mystery. Why? Who’s pulling strings? What’s going on? What does it mean?”
She nodded. “I knew you have an instinct for this kind of work.”
“Maybe so. Anyway, someone comes up with the idea of hiring the eight ball, the wild guy from way outside-”
“Me, actually.”
“I thought so. What an answer to all your prayers I was: I know nothing, ain’t a part of no system, but I got the advantage that I don’t take no for an answer, I don’t mind busting heads, I ain’t afraid of the red stuff, and I knew and loved Philip Yano. That’s how come Al Ino was able to get me such a good phony passport, that’s why someone knew where I was to ship me the Yano autopsy file, that’s why you’ve been so interested in me, and here I thought it was my redneck good looks and my real tight blue jeans.”
“Your jeans are too tight, Swagger,” she said morosely. Then she added, “I don’t see how you breathe. Anyhow, North Korea. Not China, but North Korea. Phil had access to the Japanese networks there, he knew everything about it. He was months ahead of everybody.”
“Yes, and that’s why, two days ago, you pulled the plug. When you found out Phil Yano died because Bob Lee Swagger gave him a sword that, one in a million, turned out to be the one that some old guy used to cut some other old guy’s head off three centuries ago, and that it had nothing to do with the North Koreans. No American national interest. None of our business. It was like a traffic accident, that’s all. Tough, sad, too bad, but not a part of your operation, so it was time to pull the plug. Game over, investigation over, Swagger go home.”
“Swagger, that decision was made at the very top. If it matters, I fought against it. You have no idea how I fought against it, how everybody here fought against it. But we all serve the daimyo.”
“I hear you. I done my time serving the daimyo too. The pay is lousy, the food sucks, but you get shot at a lot. Anyhow, now it’s time for the daimyo to serve us.”
“Where are you going with this, Swagger?”
“I ain’t going nowhere. I’m sitting here and I’m gonna get another one of those mocha frappe things. I think the Japanese add fish oil to ’em; that’s a drink with some kick.”
“Swagger, I can’t-”
“You’re the one that’s going someplace. You’re going to the fourth-floor commo room and getting out your little magical encryptor, the one you got in that cereal box. Here’s what you tell ’ em in Virginia: you got a tip that someone is receiving explosives from North Korea for a terror strike on Tokyo. He’s mounting a mission here to bring down the Hyatt or the Tokyo Tower or the Tokyo Dome. They’ll buy that in Langley. You request a tasked satellite intel mission, flash. You have a bird in the sky zero in on every known Miwa property in Tokyo, and your research people can dig them up for you. I’m guessing that’s the seven mansions, five or six distribution centers, ten warehouses, two or three TV stations, four or five printing plants. Twenty, tops. You put the big sky eye smack cold zero on them and inside of five minutes the bird will uncover unusual, abnormal activity at one of them. Lots of men on the grounds, lots of seemingly aimless milling about, maybe a lot of kendo practice, some judo, that sort of thing. Oh, and an unusual collection of vehicles, perimeter security, maybe even patrols. It’ll look very military op. And I’m guessing it’s near a park, or some wide-open facility with a single entrance they can control without a lot of travel. That’s where they’ll run the exchange, that’s where Kondo will kill Miko before my eyes just to see the hurt on my face, and that’s where he’ll cut me down.”
She just looked at him.
“All right,” she finally said, “so we’ve found them.”
“You want to know who’s on the team we put over the wall?”
“Do you have forty-seven samurai waiting outside?”
“No, outside is where you have your four Korean ex-Special Forces guys, who aren’t Agency contract boys but Okada-san’s bodyguards. Every time I get near you, I gotta play bumper car with them. The kid in the second car is too aggressive. He almost creamed us on the trip back from Kyoto. I hope you reamed his ass for that. He was way too close. But I know the type. They’re all probably in love with you and they like to fight. They’ll go.”
“You’re right, they’ll go. That’s four.”
“Now for the fun part. We call one-eight-hundred-SAMURAI.”
“What’s that?”
“Here’s another surprise. I have regularly been reporting to a Major Albert Fujikawa of the Japanese Self- Defense Forces. He’s in the loop and right now he’s in Tokyo with forty of his boys. He was Phil Yano’s exec in Samawah. It was his life Phil saved when the IED went off. The unit is a recon company from the First Airborne Brigade of the Eastern Army, HQ’d at Narashino. They’re paratroopers, but all they do is play sixteenth century all day long and smack each other with wooden swords. I’m betting they’re the best swordsmen in Japan.”
“If we get them involved, we break every law on the books regarding JDF.”
“They’ve figured out the patterns of on. Some things trump others in this country, and loyalty to murdered lords means more than obedience to the shogun’s law. They’re here, all set up and ready to go. You get us the satellite dope and we go in twenty-four hours.”
She just looked at him.
“You are dangerous,” she finally said. “This was your game from the start, right?”
“We hit ’em dead solid cold. They have no idea it’s coming. It’s over in a few minutes because swords leave a mess, but they don’t make no noise. Then we go home. Sometime the day after, someone notices the flies buzzing
