The Fifth Profession

stores, bars, and restaurants.

The closest equivalent Savage could imagine was New York 's Times Square before the junkies, hookers, and porno shops had contaminated its glamour. Neon. Savage had never seen so much of it. Everywhere he looked, brilliant lights turned the night into day. An awesome combination of electrified colors. Some constantly blazed. Others pulsed or flashed messages in a row along buildings like a massive radiant ticker tape. The glare of congested headlights added to the spectacle. Well-dressed pedestrians crowded the exciting streets.

Savage had no intention of showing the driver Akira's note, which in Japanese provided directions to the restaurant where Akira was supposed to call. The authorities might question all taxi drivers who'd picked up Caucasians, and Savage wanted to keep the rendezvous site beyond suspicion. Besides, he and Rachel weren't due there again until Akira's next scheduled call at nine tomorrow morning.

But Savage had other motives that compelled him to reach this district. For one thing, the comparatively few Caucasians in the city tended toward the Ginza 's glittering nightlife, and he and Rachel needed desperately to blend in. For another, they needed fresh clothes, but having been followed so expertly, they didn't dare return to the railway station, where they'd left their travel bags in a locker. A surveillance team might be waiting, on the chance that Savage and Rachel would retrace their steps and attempt to retrieve their belongings.

“Arigato,” Savage told the taxi driver, pointing toward the curb. The white-gloved man pulled over, counted the money Savage gave him, and nodded with satisfaction. With a flick of a front-seat lever, he opened the door in back. Savage and Rachel got out.

As the taxi drove away, Savage became more aware of the blazing lights around him. The din of traffic and music from bars overwhelmed him. Exhaust fumes assaulted his lungs. Pungent cooking odors drifted from restaurants.

Wanting to rush, he and Rachel were forced to match the pace of the crowd so they wouldn't attract attention. But despite their efforts to look calm, they did attract attention. Japanese pedestrians kept staring at them. Because Caucasians are unusual, even in the Ginza district? Savage wondered. Or because our faces are dirty, our clothes torn? Rachel's limp and the socks on her feet didn't help.

Savage led her toward gleaming storefronts. “We've got to find-”

He halted abruptly before an electronics shop, stunned by the image on television sets in the window. No sound came through the glass. Not that it mattered. The words that matched the startling scenes would have been incomprehensible to him, the text in Japanese.

But he didn't need an interpreter to make him understand the dismaying significance of what he watched. Heart sinking, again he saw a ghost. Muto Kamichi… Kunio Shirai… the man he'd seen sliced in half at the nonexistent Medford Gap Mountain Retreat… harangued thousands of Japanese protestors holding up anti- American signs outside the gates of a U.S. Air Force base. American soldiers stood nervously on guard beyond the fence.

The news report was similar to the TV footage Savage had watched three days ago in America and the photographs he'd seen this morning on the front page of newspapers in vending machines at Central Station.

With two important differences. The earlier protests had been outside U.S. civilian buildings, and the demonstrators -numerous to begin with-had increased dramatically not only in size but intensity.

The grim-eyed faces of American officials appeared on the array of television screens. Savage recognized the U.S. secretary of state, haggard, his brow furrowed, being interviewed by Dan Rather. The image shifted to the President's press secretary tensely answering questions from reporters.

At once, Kamichi-Shirai-was back on the screens, inciting the protestors. Whatever his name, the gray-haired, slack-jowled, slightly overweight, midfiftyish man who resembled a weary executive projected an unexpected charisma when he stepped in front of a crowd. His commanding eyes and powerful gestures transformed him into a spellbinding zealot. With every jab of his karate-callused hands, the crowd reacted with greater fervor, their expressions distorted with outrage.

“This new demonstration must have happened today while Hailey's men trapped us in the park,” Savage said. He turned toward Rachel. Her pallor made him frown. “Are you all right?”

She shrugged, impatient, as if the blood that soaked her socks hardly mattered. “What's going on? What caused this?”

“Some incident we don't know about?” Savage shook his head. “I think Kamichi”-he quickly added- “Shirai doesn't need an incident. I think the point is America… America in Japan.”

“But America and Japan are friends!”

“Not if you believe those demonstrators.” Savage sensed movement behind him and nervously pivoted. Japanese pedestrians crowded toward the television screens.

“Let's get out of here,” he said. “I'm awfully self-conscious.”

They squirmed through the thickening crowd. Savage's veins chilled. His contracting muscles stopped aching only when he reached the comparative openness of the normally congested sidewalk.

“But all of a sudden,” Rachel said. “Why? The demonstrations are larger, more dangerous.”

“Catalyzed by Kamichi.”

“Shirai.”

“I can't get used to calling him that,” Savage said. “The man I drove to Pennsylvania.”

“To a hotel that doesn't exist.”

“In my reality, I drove him there. To me, the hotel does exist. But all right”-Savage's mind whirled, seized by jamais vu-“let's call him Shirai. He's the cause of the demonstrations. I don't know why. I can't imagine the source of his power. But he, Akira, and I are somehow connected.”

A sudden thought made Savage face her. “The former emperor, Hirohito, died in January of ‘eighty- nine.”

Rachel kept walking. “Yes? And?”

“After Japan 's defeat in World War Two, MacArthur insisted on a new Japanese constitution. Even before that, when Japan surrendered in ‘forty-five, America insisted that Hirohito go on the radio and not only announce the unconditional surrender but renounce his divinity and publicly tell his people that he was human, not a god.”

“I remember reading about it,” Rachel said. “The announcement shocked Japan.”

“And helped MacArthur reconstruct the country. But one of the strictest articles in the new constitution was that church and state had to be separated. By law, religion and politics were totally severed.”

“What's that got to do with Hirohito's death?”

“His funeral. In violation of the constitution, but with no objection from America, political and religious rites were combined. Because of Japan 's economic power, every important nation sent its highest representatives. A Who's Who of international government. And all of them stood passively under wooden shelters in a pouring rain while a Japanese honor guard escorted Hirohito's coffin into a shrine, where behind a screen Shinto rites, traditional Japanese religious funereal rites, were performed. And no outsider said, ‘Wait a minute. This is illegal. This is how the Pacific War got started.’ “

“They respected a great man's death,” Rachel said.

“Or they almost shit their pants in fear that if they objected to the Shinto rites, Japan would get so angry it would cut off their credit. Hell, Japan finances most of America 's budget deficit. No country would dare object if Japan reverted to its former constitution. As long as Japan has the money-and the power-its government can do what it wants.”

“That's where your argument falls apart,” Rachel said. “ Japan 's government is responsible.”

“While moderates rule it. But what if Kamichi-Shirai- takes command? Suppose the old ways come back and a radical party assumes control! Did you know that Japan – supposed to be nonmilitary- spends more on defense than any NATO country except America? And they're suspicious of South Korea! And China 's always worried them! And…!”