“I read Shogun,” she said, with light sarcasm. “Not to mention I have a doctorate in Asian art.”
He ignored that. “The original Shiro-sama failed, of course, and was ordered by the emperor to commit ritual suicide in his temple in the mountains. He did, and his followers cremated his body and put his bones in a sacred urn to be guarded until the time he was reborn.”
“And that’s the Hayashi Urn?” she said. “A funeral jar? And I kept my cookies in it?”
“The bones are presumably in the possession of the current Shirosama. I don’t think your cookies were contaminated.”
She still didn’t look too happy about it. “Why did Hana have it? And why does the Shirosama want it?”
“Hana was a descendant of one of the most powerful followers of the original Shiro-sama, and the original temple was on lands once belonging to her family. No one knows for sure where the ruins are—only she kept the secret—but the True Realization Fellowship have every intention of retrieving the urn and returning it to where it belongs.”
“What’s wrong with that? You yourself said it was a Japanese treasure that belongs in Japan.”
“It belongs to the people of Japan, and a government that can watch over it. Not a group of fanatics who are far more dangerous than anyone realizes.”
“What harm can an ancient piece of ceramic do?”
He leaned against the wall. “Don’t be naive. The urn is nothing more than a catalyst, a symbol. The current Shirosama and his followers plan to take it back to Japan, find the ruins of the temple and the remains of the original Shiro-sama and reunite the bones and the urn.?
?
“So?”
“And then, according to legend, the new Shirosama will ascend in full power to the universe, Armageddon will follow, and the world will be cleansed by fire and blood.”
“So they put the bones in the urn and nothing happens,” she said, turning to look at Taka in the shadowy room. “And then everyone goes home disappointed and no harm done. Unless you actually believe in doomsday prophets?”
“The problem with doomsday prophets, particularly the ones we have nowadays, is they don’t believe in their destiny enough not to give it a little help. Reuniting the urn and the bones will signal a wave of mass destruction that will be very hard to stop. You know what religious fanatics are capable of—the whole world has been watching what’s going on in the Middle East, and trust me, the Japanese have always been more than ready to die in the service of their master.”
“So you smash the urn and everyone lives happily ever after. Problem solved.”
Easier said than done. Ostensibly, he could kill an innocent young woman if he had to, but he couldn’t bring himself to destroy such a singularly beautiful piece of Japanese history. It was a simple fact.
“Could you destroy it?” he countered.
Her eyes met his in the darkness, and then she turned away again, facing the window. “I don’t suppose I could. And you think I hold the key to where the ancient shrine is located? I’ve never been to Japan, even though I’ve wanted to go. It was something I was going to do with Hana, and when she died I just couldn’t face the idea of it. Maybe if we’d gone she would have told me, but as it was she never said a thing about her family history. She didn’t like to talk about it. The war was too painful.”
“Nevertheless, she left the knowledge with you. In the book, the kimono. Somewhere.”
Summer swiveled around on the bench, silhouetted against the open window and the moonlight. He couldn’t see her face, and he didn’t know whether that was good or bad. “And what did they tell you?”
“We’ll figure it out,” he replied enigmatically.
She turned away from him, and he fought back his sudden guilt. If she ran, if the Shirosama caught her, then the cult leader know that he wasn’t looking for just the urn and the girl. There were other pieces to the puzzle.
“And then what will you do?”
“Stop him before he can set off a wave of attacks that would make 9/11 look like a minor incident.”
“Why doesn’t someone just kill him, if he’s that dangerous?”
“The only thing worse than a cult leader demigod is a martyr. He has hundreds of thousands of followers around the world and the resources and equipment to create deadly havoc. His murder would signal the start of it all. The death toll might be lower—tens of thousands instead of hundreds of thousands—but it’s still unacceptable.”
She was silent for a long moment. “How high is the death toll now? There’s Micah and the followers you…killed. And then maybe there’s me and Jilly. How many will die before he’s stopped?”
“I don’t know,” Taka said simply, not denying it.
She turned back to the window. “Tell me when you’re ready to go,” she said, dismissing him.