Flashback

boys, but that his mourning for his… concubine… was deeper, darker, and continues to this day.”

“What was her name, Omura-sama?”

The Advisor looked at him. “I forget her name, Nick.” The old man seemed to be saying I’m lying with his gaze and tone… but why?

“They had a child together,” continued Omura. “A daughter. She was, by all reports, quite beautiful. And almost completely Western-looking, with only the slightest hint of the Japanese race in her appearance.”

Nick was totally lost. He found it hard to believe that Sato could love anyone, but especially not a child that didn’t look Japanese. Was this some sort of riddle he was supposed to solve?

“You used the past tense again, Omura-sama,” Nick said softly. “Is the daughter born to Sato’s late concubine also dead?”

“Hai.”

“Also from natural causes?” Nick heard his old detective voice working: stomp all around the missing piece with a thousand stupid questions until all the vegetation is flattened and what you’re looking for stands out.

Or doesn’t.

Omura leaned forward. He didn’t answer the question, at least not directly. “Hideki Sato, as you know, Nick, is a daimyo in his own right, with vassals and soldiers and keiretsu interests of his own. But Hiroshi Nakamura is his liege lord. Sato is Nakamura’s vassal.”

“Yes?”

“So when daimyo Hideki Sato’s own powers and influence became too great for Nakamura’s comfort, he demanded—in the best feudal Nipponese tradition from our own Middle Ages, you understand—that Colonel Sato hand over his beloved daughter to be held as a sort of captive, a hostage to Sato’s continued loyalty and service, as it were.”

“Jesus,” whispered Nick.

Omura nodded. “I believe this sort of taking your vassals’ or enemies’ most beloved children was a common thing in Western feudal times as well.”

“But this is the twenty-first century…,” began Nick in self-righteous tones but quickly shut up. Most of the thirty-plus years of this century had been one giant leap backward toward barbarism and clans and czars and theocracies and warlords and a more violent but also more stable feudal system everywhere in the world, the United States not excluded.

“She died in Nakamura’s captivity?” said Nick. There was something important here, if he could only find it and dig it out.

“Let us say that she arranged to take her own life,” said Omura. Even his eyes looked sad. “Out of shame.”

“Shame for being a hostage?” asked Nick. “For being… what? Sato’s child? For doing something wrong? I don’t get it.”

Omura said nothing.

“I would think that the Sato I know would’ve gone nuts,” said Nick at last. “Gone nuts and tried to kill Nakamura and everyone else even remotely involved in his daughter’s death.”

Omura shook his head. “You do not understand us, Nick. In twenty years, we have largely returned to bushido and our earlier form of feudal life and thinking. It will be what helps us survive as a culture… as a people. If a man is ready to give or even take his own life for his liege lord, he must also be willing to sacrifice his entire family if that is his lord and master’s will.”

“Jesus,” Nick said again. “So Sato did nothing about his daughter’s death?”

“I did not say that,” murmured Omura. “I merely said that he sought no revenge. There is one other thing we must discuss before you leave, Nick.”

Nick glanced at his watch. It was getting late. Ambrose would have to push it to get him to the John Wayne Airport in time. “Yes, sir?”

“Do you understand why Nippon is engaged in the war in China, Nick?”

“I think I do, Omura-sama. Japan had all but underbred itself out of existence by the beginning of this century… at least it was on the path toward doing so. By pretending to be UN peacekeepers when China tore itself apart in this civil war and general collapse—and by hiring American troops to play that role—Japan’s sort of reinvigorating itself with almost a billion young Chinese to do their work. New ports. New products. New workforce. But in a two-tier sort of Greater Japan, with you Japanese nationals always in the upper tier.”

“But not in thinking of the Chinese and others as slaves as before,” Omura said quickly. “Not this time. This Daitoa Senso—this Greater East Asia War—will not include a Rape of Nanking. Nor will it end with a second attempt by the Japanese to become shido minzoku—‘the world’s foremost people.’ ”

Nick shrugged. He didn’t really care that much what or how the Japanese people thought of themselves.

“But all that is mere preparation,” said Omura.

“Preparation for what?”

“For the real war, Nick.”

“The real war with… China? India? What’s left of Russia? Nuevo Mexico? Not America, certainly.” Nick was confused.

Omura shook his head and got easily to his feet. The little man seemed to balance on the balls of his sneakered feet like a boxer or athlete. Nick stood up, but in stages, and painfully.

“The coming war—and it will come in the next five years, Nick—will be a total war, an existential war, a nuclear war,” Daichi Omura said as he took Nick by the elbow and began leading him toward the door. “That culture or ours will inherit the earth. Only one culture will survive this war and determine humanity’s future, Nick. And it cannot be theirs. It is why we need to settle the issue of who will be Shogun soon.”

“Holy shit,” said Nick and stopped in his tracks. Omura gently moved him along. Outside, the sun was setting and the L.A. basin and its surviving tall buildings glowed gold. Sunlight glinted back from windshields on the remaining freeways. “Nuclear war, Omura-sama? With who? And why? For God’s sake, why? And what does this have to do with…”

Omura silenced him with a gentle hand on Nick’s back. “Bottom-san, if you do see Colonel Sato, would you please give my greetings to him in the following way? Say to him, as one old chess opponent to another, In this world there is a tree without any roots; / Its yellow leaves send back the wind. Can you remember that, Bottom-san?”

Nick said, “In this world there is a tree without any roots; / Its yellow leaves send back the wind.”

Omura opened the door and saw his guest through it. “You are a smart man, Nick Bottom. This is one reason—although not the important reason—that Hiroshi Nakamura hired you to solve the murder of his son. Certainly you are up to the challenge of solving the larger mysteries as well, especially since they are all one. Good luck, Nick.”

Nick shook the old man’s hand—a firm, dry, affectionate handshake—and then the door was closed in his face.

“We are landing, gentlemen,” said the child-faced flight attendant. Her kimono made small rustling sounds as she cleared the last of their glasses and glided into the aft cabin.

Sato was awake and had been looking at Nick as he’d slept. Nick rubbed his eyes and face, feeling the stubble on his cheeks and chin.

The A310/360 landed gently at Denver International Airport and taxied to the Nakamura private hangar.

Nick grabbed what few things he’d brought aboard. He left the nylon bag of flashback vials on the floor.

Sato raised one eyebrow as he waved Nick to go down the stairway first. “I have a vehicle waiting. Can I drop you at your condominium, Bottom-san?”

“I’ll phone a cab.”

“Very good. I shall notify the hangar manager that you can wait inside until your cab arrives,” said Sato. A long, black, hydrogen-powered Lexus hummed to a stop on the tarmac and two of Sato’s men stepped out. One held the rear door for Sato while the other watched the perimeter with a professional bodyguard’s quick flicks of