He made no move to put either threat into action, so I said, “Why would you want to do that?” I wanted it to sound nonchalant, but I’m afraid it came out with a bit of a quaver.
“Because right now I am cross and feel cheated. More important, you are part of the reason I was cheated.”
I decided to try and change the subject. “You said I had the blade you wanted most of all, but that was only five of them. One’s still missing.”
“I have the missing sixth blade. It’s been in my family for generations. We’ve always been taught to hide the fact, and unlike Sonoda-san’s family, we have. It’s foolish, I know, because the Toyotomi are never coming back. Still, if a family can be loyal to a certain brand of automobile, buying nothing but that brand across generations, I guess my family’s loyalty to the responsibilities they accepted along with the sword isn’t too peculiar.”
“And you stole the blade in New York? The police said they thought someone was lowered from the roof.”
He sneered. “The police everywhere have no imagination. Ninja have tools used to scale steep castle walls. They work amazingly well on a modern skyscraper.”
“And the man killed in the robbery?”
Hirota smiled again. “Why would I admit to doing that?”
That gave me my first hope that I might get out of this alive. He wouldn’t be cautious if he thought I wouldn’t be around to testify against him.
“I will tell you one thing,” Hirota continued.
“What’s that?”
“Studying to kill a man and actually killing one are two very different things.”
I was going to pursue this interesting statement, but decided discretion really is the better part of valor. Instead, I asked, “What about the Rotterdam blade?”
Hirota laughed. “That was trivial. All it took was a piece of string, a wire, and the ability to blend into a group of Japanese tourists. If you think about it, I’m sure someone as clever as you will be able to figure that one out.”
“And the student who was accused of stealing the sword from the Japanese National Museum?”
The smile was wiped from Hirota’s face. Bad move on my part.
“I was in Los Angeles trying to steal your sword from your flat when the student, Ishibashi, died.”
“The burglar that Mrs. Hernandez saw!”
“Is that the old woman who lives above your flat?”
“Yes.”
“She caused me a little difficulty. I had to cut short my search of your flat when the police showed up, but I would have returned the next night to finish the job. Instead I had an excited message from my colleagues that you were in Japan with the sword and would be appearing on a television show.” The TV promo. “I told them to follow you to see what hotel you were staying at while I arranged a flight back to Japan. Unfortunately, their enthusiasm exceeded their ability to perform even that simple task, and they decided to catch you and force you to give them the sword. Fools. When I got back to Japan and found out that the TV show was trying to contact me about the blades, I was ecstatic. When you actually gave me your blade to examine, I thanked the gods.”
“So you were in Los Angeles when the student died?”
“Yes. Ishibashi was a student of mine. He was going to Waseda, but also taking a class in Japanese history from me at All Japan University. He took the sword from the Japan National Museum to please me. I would not have hurt him.”
“So it was actually a suicide?”
Hirota looked at me a long minute. Then he said, “The members of a group like the Nippon Tokkotai may be filled with Yamato Damashii, but they aren’t always filled with good judgment. They thought the proper way to insure silence in Ishibashi was to eliminate him. If I was in Japan, I would not have allowed it.”
“Who did it?”
Another pause. Then Hirota said, “You took care of Mr. Kim very smartly with a rock. It knocked the treasure hunting zeal out of him.”
“So Kim killed the student?”
Hirota smiled. “Even the Japanese police might come to the truth of things if they stopped accepting any plausible explanation and sought the facts.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Hirota shrugged. “Have you had a chance to inspect the treasures that our long search has brought us?”
“It was too dark for me,” I admitted. “I couldn’t tell what was in there. I bumped into something that felt weird, but other than that…” I let the sentence trail away. I kept my eyes on the tree limb Hirota held in front of him.
“After I explored the treasures in the cave, I was thoroughly disgusted. I told my companions and they wanted to leave immediately. Especially Mr. Kim. But I came back alone to see if there was something I had missed. I saw you just as you entered the cave. I picked up a branch and waited for you because I wanted to know your reaction to the treasure in the cave.”
“I didn’t have a flashlight. I couldn’t see what’s in the cave.”
Hirota laughed. “The master detective and you forgot to bring a flashlight. Amazing.”
“What’s in the cave?” I asked.
“Bails of rotting silk and rotting brocades. That’s all that’s in the cave. We looked it over quite carefully. There’s no gold and there’s no silver, just rotting clothes left to turn to dust after hundreds of years of decay. It was quite a disappointment. We had plans for the money we assumed would be there.”
“Could the gold or silver be buried someplace in the cave?”
“The floor and walls are solid rock. Thanks to your meddling, I won’t have a chance to find out for sure, but I think that the gold and silver are gone. Assuming they were ever in there, someone must have found them and took them. For some reason, they left all the brocade and silk clothes. Maybe when the treasure was found, they were already rotting. You know, it took me a long time to match the map found on the blades to the right area of Japan. I don’t see how it was possible for you to put together a map without all six of the blades.”
“We used a computer. We matched the patterns on the five blades we had to a computerized map of Japan. That’s how I ended up here.”
Hirota shook his head. “All this high technology is the ruin of Japan. It’s made us forget our traditions and heritage. Soon we’ll be just a pale imitation of the United States.” I figured if I could keep him talking I could play for time. As Hirota talked, the blade dipped downwards in very slow increments.
“Everybody wants to preserve their culture,” I said. “But you know Japan can never go back. For better or worse, it’s wedded to the West. That wedding has brought a lot of benefits.”
“It’s also had a great price: the restructuring of our national identity.”
“But your culture was changing anyway. Even before the war, Japanese culture was not like the culture of the people who left that treasure in there. Three hundred years of social evolution saw to that. You can’t go back.”
“But we want to go back. We yearn to go back. With the help of groups like the Nippon Tokkotai, we will go back. It’s simply a matter of gathering enough money to further our program.”
“Is that what this is all about? Money?” I asked.
“With the bursting of our bubble economy, the funding for the Nippon Tokkotai has dried up,” Hirota said. “Japanese politics is fueled by money, much like the politics in your own country. The organization saw this as a way of raising large amounts of cash to finance activities. We need that cash to become a force in national politics in Japan, to return us to the values we’ve forgotten since our defeat in the Pacific War. We needed that treasure, and now it’s gone.”
“The treasure would have been gone whether I got involved or not.”
Hirota nodded. “I suppose so. A very logical observation. I think that’s what’s wrong with all of us now. At least us Japanese.”