Johnny and Nadia exchanged concerned glances. Perhaps the elder Nakamura was not entirely in control of his mental faculties.
“What war beneath the sea?” Nadia said.
“The war between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The surface of Earth is made of crust. The crust is made of plates. They are constantly destroyed and created by underwater volcanoes caused by heat from radioactive decay of Earth. The underwater volcanoes around the Atlantic Ocean do battle with the Pacific Ocean. One ocean get larger, other ocean get smaller. The Atlantic Ocean is making plates of crust faster than Pacific Ocean. Atlantic Ocean is winning. Pacific Ocean is gradually shrinking. In three hundred million years, there will be no more Pacific Ocean. It will be a mountain.
“Worst of volcanoes run down the center of Japan — like a human being’s spine, yes? It cause earthquakes and tsunamis more and more dangerous over time. That is why geologists call Japan the Ring of Fire. The three-eleven earthquake. It was inevitable. Because of the Ring of Fire.”
Johnny said, “What did you do for a living before you bought the inn, Nakamura-san?”
“I was a physics professor,” he said. “But geology. It makes me very fascinated. On the day of the great earthquake, one of the plates under Japan snapped upward. It caused the Japanese island of Honshu to move eight feet closer to America, and four hundred kilometers of the coastline of Japan to drop two feet. This caused a magnitude nine earthquake. It lasted for six minutes and released six hundred million times more energy than the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. Two days later volcanoes exploded on Japanese island of Kyushu and in Antarctica. And planet Earth started rotating almost one second faster.”
“Where were you when the earthquake hit?” Johnny said.
“I was in Tokyo lecturing at a university. Japan has an advanced warning system for earthquake. That system gave us one minute warning. At first everyone thought it was just another earthquake. The students carry cell phones. They were communicating with each other on the social media. On Twitter. Before the earthquake, I did not know what Twitter was. Now everyone in Japan knows Twitter. The twitters started getting more frantic. A student shared a picture of his parents’ house collapsing. Another showed a woman hugging the ground for support. Then it hit us. Computers started to slide off desks. Skyscrapers started swaying like rocking chairs. The next six minutes felt like six hours. The only way we could tell when the earthquake stopped was when the ceiling fan stopped swaying.”
“How did everyone get home?” Bobby said.
“People walked. Elevators, trains, buses, and cars. They all stopped. Tens of thousands of people walked home. There was no traffic. They walked in streets. They walked calmly. There was no running. There was no panic. From the first moment there was Japanese solidarity. An unspoken understanding that we would get through this together. Only when we got home did we realize exactly what was happening to our country. Roads cracked and disappeared under the Earth. Cars and houses were thrown like toys.”
“How long until the tsunami started?” Johnny said.
“Within an hour, a tsunami washed away Sendai Airport along the eastern coastline. Cars and planes were swept away. A camera from a helicopter caught a picture of a driver trying to steer his vehicle away from the wave. He was swallowed whole. The waves were black. Black like night. Entire towns were washed away. I was in my hotel room in Tokyo, just sitting and trembling. Finally I got the message from wife that she had arrived at her cousin’s house in the mountains.”
“Ah,” Nadia said. “Your wife wasn’t travelling with you.”
Nakamura appeared pensive in the rearview mirror. “‘I am safe,’ she said. ‘I have made it to higher ground.’ I can remember the relief. I can remember sending my son a note that his mother was safe.”
Nadia was about to say thank goodness, but stopped herself. Nakamura’s words spoke of a happy ending, but there his tone was too somber.
“It turned out I spoke too quickly,” Nakamura said. “High ground was not high enough. No one had ever imagined a tsunami of this force. No one ever imagined waves thirty-nine meters high.”
Nadia had used the metric system so much during her two trips to Eastern Europe she could do the numbers in her head. “A hundred thirty feet,” she said.
“And so the salary men in Tokyo who thought their wives would be safe in the mountains discovered that they were the safer ones,” Nakamura said. “The skyscrapers were built to survive an earthquake, but the mountain was not tall enough to withstand the tsunami.”
“We’re very sorry for your loss,” Nadia said.
Nakamura merged into the right lane to exit.
“Life is suffering,” he said.
“Ganbaro, Nakamura-san,” Johnny said, “So desne?”
Nakamura’s eyes lit up with appreciation. “Yes,” he said, with a quick bow to the rearview mirror. “Ganbarimashou.”
Johnny glanced alternately at Nadia and Bobby. “It’s a special phrase in the Japanese language,” he said. “It means stay strong, stand tall. Keep fighting.”
“Kyoto operates on a different electric grid than Tokyo,” Nakamura said. “The people in Kyoto were much less affected than in other parts of Japan. Still, they conserved electricity to donate to relief efforts. There was wind, snow, and rain in Kyoto after the earthquake, but there were no cherry blossoms that year. People smiled less. But they woke up from complacency. Adversity reminded us how to be strong as a nation. The aftershocks only strengthened our resolve.”
“Aftershocks?” Bobby said.
“More earthquakes,” Nakamura said. “Two measuring 7.7 and 7.9 within a month. Eighteen hundred more measuring 4.0 or higher within a year.”
“Almost two thousand earthquakes?” Bobby said.
“Yes,” Nakamura said. They drove quietly for half an hour until Nakamura spoke again.
“There are three gray satchels beside linen,” he said. “You will find personal protective equipment inside. Please put them on.”
They opened the bags. Each one contained white overalls, shoes, rubber gloves, plastic goggles, and a respirator.
A bolt of anxiety wracked Nadia. “Hazmat suits?”
“Yes. Radiation suits.”
“Why do we need radiation suits?” Johnny said.
“My son can explain. We will be meeting him soon. Please to prepare. You do not need to put breathing equipment on yet. My son will show you how.”
They put their suits on.
Ten minutes later Nakamura turned into an empty gas stand, drove past the pumps, and accelerated around to the back. A small parking lot backed up to a wooded lot. Two jalopies sat rusting in the lot beside a garbage Dumpster. A crisp white van sat idling beside the old cars. Japanese lettering covered the side of the van. Beneath it was the English translation. Global Medical Corps.
A younger man resembling Nakamura sat behind the driver’s seat.
“That’s him,” Johnny said.
The younger Nakamura opened the door and emerged before his father could back into the space beside his van. The elder Nakamura directed them toward the rear door, which would keep them hidden from the front of the gas stand. The younger Nakamura opened the rear door and introduced himself to Nadia and Bobby.
“Into the back of my van,” he said. “Quickly, please.”
“Where are you taking us?” Nadia said. She held her purse in one hand, a respirator in the other. She knew the answer to the question. Given the equipment they’d been asked to wear, there was little doubt about where they were going. Still, the question had to be asked.
“To meet with Genesis II,” Nakamura said.
“Where is the meeting?” Johnny said.