The Fifth Profession

Savage assessed the harried crowd but didn't go near its risky confusion. Instead he gestured again, this time toward a sliding door. Kamichi and Akira went with him, unconcerned about their luggage.

Good, Savage thought. His initial impression had been accurate. These two understood correct procedure.

They emerged on a busy sidewalk beneath a concrete canopy. Beyond, the drizzle persisted. The temperature, high for April, was sixty degrees. A moist breeze felt tepid.

Savage glanced to the left toward approaching traffic, reassured to see a dark blue Plymouth sedan veering toward the curb. A red-haired man got out, came quickly around to the curb, and opened the rear passenger door. Just before Kamichi got in, he handed the red-haired man several luggage receipts. Savage approved that the principal was experienced enough to perform this menial service rather than requiring Akira to relax surveillance by reaching into his windbreaker pocket to get the receipts.

Savage slid behind the steering wheel, pressed a button that locked all the doors, then fastened his seat belt. Meanwhile the red-haired man went for the luggage. Because Kamichi and Akira had taken a prudent length of time to get off the plane, their suitcases would almost certainly be on the conveyor belt by now. A safe, efficient arrival.

One minute later, the red-haired man finished placing three suitcases in the Plymouth's trunk and shut the lid. Instantly Savage drove from the curb, checking his rearview mirror, noticing his associate walk toward a taxi. Savage had paid him earlier. The man would take for granted that Savage couldn't permit distraction by saying “thanks.”

Savage himself took for granted that since the two Japanese had behaved so knowledgeably about security, they understood why he'd chosen a car that wasn't ostentatious and wouldn't be easy to follow. Not that Savage expected to be followed. As Graham had said, the risk level on this assignment was low. Nonetheless Savage never varied his basic procedure, and the Plymouth-seemingly no different from others-had modifications: bulletproof glass, armor paneling, reinforced suspension, and a supercharged V-8 engine.

As windshield wipers flapped and tires hissed along the wet pavement, Savage steered smoothly through traffic, left the airport complex, and headed west on the Grand Central Parkway. The envelope Graham had given him was in his suitcoat, but he didn't refer to its contents, having memorized his instructions. He couldn't help wondering why Kamichi had rejected Newark's airport in favor of LaGuardia. The drive would have been shorter, less complicated, because although Savage's immediate route was toward Manhattan, his ultimate destination forced him across the northern tip of the island, then west through New Jersey into Pennsylvania. Kamichi's logic, the purpose of the mazelike itinerary, eluded him.

6

At five, the drizzle stopped. Amid the congestion of rush hour traffic, Savage crossed the George Washington Bridge. He asked his principal if he'd care to enjoy some sake, which having been heated was in a thermos, the temperature not ideal but acceptable.

Kamichi declined.

Savage explained that the Plymouth was equipped with a telephone, if Kamichi-san required it.

Again Kamichi declined.

That was the extent of the conversation.

Until twenty miles west on Interstate 80, where Kamichi and Akira exchanged remarks. In Japanese.

Savage was competent in several European languages, a necessity of his work, but Japanese was too difficult for him, its complex system of suffixes and prefixes bewildering. Because Kamichi spoke English, Savage wondered why his principal had chosen to exclude him from this conversation. How could he do his job when he couldn't understand what the man he'd pledged to protect was saying?

Akira leaned forward. “At the next exit, you'll see a restaurant-hotel complex. I believe you call it a Howard Johnson's. Please stop to the left of the swimming pool.”

Savage frowned for two reasons. First, Akira had remarkably specific knowledge of the road ahead. Second, Akira's English diction was perfect. The Japanese language made no distinction between r and J. Akira, though, didn't say “prease” and “Howald Johnson's.” His accent was flawless.

Savage nodded, obeying instructions, steering off the highway. To the left of the swimming pool, where a sign said CLOSED, a balding man in a jogging suit appeared from behind a maintenance building, considered the two Japanese in the Plymouth's rear seat, and held up a briefcase.

The briefcase-metal, with a combination lock-was identical to the briefcase that Kamichi had carried from the plane.

“Please,” Akira said, “take my master's briefcase, leave the car, and exchange one briefcase for the other.”

Savage did what he was told.

Back in the car, he gave the look-alike briefcase to his employer.

“My master thanks you,” Akira said.

Savage bowed his head, puzzled by the exchange of briefcases. “It's my purpose to serve. Arigato.”

“ ‘Thank you’ in response to his ‘thank you’? My master commends your politeness.”

7

Returning to Interstate 80, Savage checked his rearview mirror to see if he was being followed. The vehicles behind him kept shifting position. Good.

It was dark when he crossed the mountain-flanked border from New Jersey into Pennsylvania. Headlights approaching in the opposite lanes allowed him to study the image of his passengers in his rearview mirror.

The gray-haired principal seemed asleep, his slack-jawed face tilted back, his eyes closed, or perhaps he was meditating.

But Akira sat ramrod straight, on guard. Like his master, his face did not reveal his thoughts. His features were stoic, impassive.

Akira's eyes, though, expressed the greatest sadness Savage had ever seen. To someone familiar with Japanese culture, Savage's conclusion might have seemed naive, for the Japanese by nature tended toward melancholy, Savage knew. Stern obligations imposed on them by complex traditional values made the Japanese watchful and reserved, lest they unwittingly insult someone or place themselves in another's debt. In premodern times, he'd read, a Japanese would hesitate to tell a passerby that he'd dropped his wallet- because the passerby would then feel honorbound to supply a reward much greater than the value of the contents of the wallet. Similarly Savage had read ancient accounts in which someone who'd fallen from a boat and thrashed in a river, in danger of drowning, had been ignored by people on shore-because to rescue the victim would be to inflict upon that victim an obligation to repay the rescuer again and again and again, forever in this ephemeral earthly existence, until the rescued victim was granted the gift of rescuing the rescuer or else had the privileged release from obligation by dying as the gods had intended at the river before the rescuer intervened.

Shame and duty controlled the Japanese personality. Devotion to honor compelled them but often also wearied them. Peace could be elusive, fatigue of the spirit inescapable. Ritual suicide- seppuku-was on occasion the only solution.

Savage's research made him realize that these values applied only to uncorrupted, unwesternized Japanese, those who'd refused to adapt to the cultural infection of America's military occupation after the war. But Akira gave the impression of being both uncorruptible and, despite his knowledge of American ways, an unrelenting patriot of the Land of the Gods. Even so, the emotion in his eyes was more than the usual Japanese melancholy. His sadness