The Sword Thief Read online

  Across the runway, the trio climbed into the jet. Irina leaned forward, glancing at her cell phone, which still showed the GPS coordinates and recipient of her last call: OH, ALISTAIR.

  '"Oh, Alistair,' indeed," she said under her breath. "You are making this chase too easy for me ... "

  "Shto?" said her pilot. "Follow them, Alexander."

  He pulled the gearshift and the plane's engine hummed to life. Ahead of them, the Cessna was beginning to position for takeoff.

  Now she would see if he was telling the truth about their ultimate destination. She grinned. No one ever put anything over on Irina Spasky.

  CHAPTER 5

  Amy's brother was never comfortable in a new place until he committed an act of cluelessness. In Tokyo, it happened the morning after their arrival at the Thank You Very Much Hotel.

  "Dan, you can't just take that -- it's stealing," Amy said, watching him struggle to fit a hotel ashtray in his back pocket.

  "They won't know it's missing!" Dan protested. "I need it for my collection."

  Dan collected everything. If it fit in a house and wasn't chained to the floor, he had a

  collection for it.

  "Your sister is correct," Uncle Alistair said sternly, stopping to lean on his walking stick on the way to the front door. He smelled of aftershave and powder. On the trip in from the airport, he had bought Amy and Dan a few changes of clothes and insisted they freshen up and have a long sleep.

  Amy had not slept for a nanosecond. For one thing, she was too nervous. For another, Dan kept muttering

  "Mrrp" in his sleep. He was really missing Saladin.

  But that hadn't curbed his obsession for collecting. Amy held out her palm. Reluctantly, Dan put the ashtray in it. "Okay, but can you get me a Thank You Very Much Hotel matchbook, then?" he asked.

  Amy returned the ashtray to a table in the lobby, with Dan skulking behind. They still couldn't pronounce the hotel's real name. Instead, they nicknamed it after the only phrase any of the staff ever said to them. Picking up a matchbook from the front desk, Amy smiled at the desk clerk. "Thank you very much!" the clerk said.

  As they walked back toward the door, Dan eyed Alistair, who was looking away from them. "Let's escape," Dan murmured. "We have to find our peeps. Nellie and Saladin."

  "Are you crazy?" Amy whispered back. "Uncle Alistair paid for this hotel stay. He knows Japanese, and he's going to help us around town."

  "You like him!" Dan said in horror. "He's turned your mind!"

  Amy whirled on him. "I don't like him or trust him. But without him we're stuck, Dan. So we have to pretend, at least until Nellie finds us."

  "Or we find her!" Dan grumbled as he and Amy headed toward Alistair at the front entrance. Together they stepped out into a crisp, sunny day. To their left, people in manga-hero costumes greeted shoppers in front of a gleaming high-rise shopping center. The scent of some strange blossom wafted from a park, which was across a busy street filled with car and bike traffic. Tokyo reminded Amy of New York City, without all the people yelling at each other.

  Dan's eyes were cast upward, gawking at a steel structure that rose above the park. "Cool, someone brought over the Eiffel Tower and painted it red and white!"

  Alistair smiled. "The Tokyo Tower is taller than its Parisian counterpart, but also lighter, due to advances in steel construction -- advances that were developed, may I add, by an Ekat engineer. My illustrious family. And you see that tall apartment tower with curved sides? It suggests a Japanese flower found in great abundance in Shiba Park. The brainchild of a Janus architect -- " "Wait, that park has flowers made of steel?" Dan said.

  "I know someone with a brain made of tin," Amy replied, then turned back to Alistair. "How do you know so much about your family?"

  "Someday I will show you my collection," Alistair said. "But let's get to the task at hand. It is a ten-minute cab ride to the Metropolitan Library."

  "Library. Woo-hoo. Can't wait," Dan said, absently fingering his matchbook. "Hey, I know. You guys go. I'll pick up some snapper sushi and take a cab to the airport. I'll meet you later."

  "What makes you think Saladin is at the airport?" Alistair asked, walking toward the street.

  "I figure two things could have happened," Dan said. "One -- the Kabras brainwashed Nellie and are leading her around town trying to find us. Or Two -- Nellie managed to subdue them with superior ninja training techniques she didn't realize she had picked up by mental telepathy from me. Actually, I'm betting on One. Either way, Saladin would ..." Dan's face darkened. "I I can't stop thinking of him, still on that conveyor belt, all alone, going round and round... "

  "I know you love your pet," Alistair said. "But you must think of your own safety first. The Kabras will expect you to come to Japan. They may also expect you to go to the airport in search of your beloved feline and babysitter -- "

  "Au pair," Dan corrected him.

  "You simply cannot risk walking into a trap," Alistair continued.

  It made Amy sick not to know where Nellie and Saladin were, too. She'd been trying to contact Nellie on her cell phone since they arrived. She hated telling Dan not to go after them. But Alistair's advice made sense. "Knowing Natalie and Ian," Amy said, following Alistair toward a taxi stand, "they'll find us."

  "But -- " Dan protested.

  "We have to move forward," Amy said. "Nellie will land on her feet." Dan sighed. "Saladin, too, I guess. I mean, being a cat and all... "

  As they threaded their way through the plaza, Dan kept lighting matches and blowing them out. "Will you stop it?" Amy said.

  "Why?" Dan said, lighting another match. "It's fun. It keeps my mind off the fact that here we are ignoring the only two people we really like, plus we're in the land of ninjas and Mothra and really cool martial arts, and we're going to spend another day in a library."

  As he approached a waiting taxicab, Alistair said something to the driver in rapid, fluent-sounding Japanese and signaled Amy and Dan to climb in.

  They sped through the traffic, passing rows of modern steel buildings and an occasional ornate ancient pagoda surrounded with gardens. "Why can't we stay in one of those cottages?" Dan asked.

  "They are ancient temples," Alistair replied. "You will see more of them as we approach our destination. The military dictator -- the shogun -- ordered all temples moved here. At the time, the Roppongi area was a remote outpost of the capital, which was then called Edo. Part of the area was a hunting ground for the shogunate."

  "Fascinating," Amy said. She loved learning about the origins of cities.

  Dan nodded, staring dully out the window. "I think I just saw a celebrity."

  Alistair's cell phone rang. "Hello ... ? Yes ... ah, bravo, Serge. She whaf? Well, imagine that -- ha! Very good. And thank you so much. Da. Do svidanya!"

  He put the phone away and turned to Dan and Amy. "Serge is safely in Siberia with his two children. Irina completely fell for the disguise. She thought they were we. When she realized she'd been had, she began cursing with words that embarrassed even Serge."

  "Yes!" Dan whooped, slapping high fives to his sister and uncle. "I have you to thank, Amy," Alistair said, beaming. "How stupid of me not to realize Irina could have tracked us with the cell phone GPS." "I thought of it, like, right away," Dan said modestly. "I'm just more shy." Amy rolled her eyes. "And I'm the queen of England."

  "You do look wrinkly and boring," Dan said. He darted away before Amy could whack him.

  Soon the cab pulled up to a massive, modern, boxlike building at the edge of a lush park.

  "Arisugawanomiya!" the cabdriver announced. Dan looked panic-stricken. "What did I do now?"

  "It is the name of the park, and that building is the Central Branch of the Tokyo Metropolitan Library," Alistair explained, as he paid the driver and climbed out. "We have only limited time before Irina catches on. Because we've detached our GPS devices, it is essential that we stay close together. And set your phones to 'vibrate' while in the library."

&n
bsp; "How can I stand the excitement?" Dan droned.

  The moment they entered the building, a trim librarian was at Alistair's side, bowing and speaking with him in rapid Japanese. She smiled at Dan and Amy and gestured for them to follow her.

  "You know her?" Dan whispered as they climbed a grand marble staircase. "Like from back in your shogun-hunting days?"

  "No, she is just being courteous," Alistair replied, his limp barely noticeable as he walked. "It is respect for my age. Although perhaps Ms. Nakamura remembers my television appearances ten years ago. My company's Terribly Tasty Teriyaki microwavable burritos were quite the rage."

  They entered a small private room lined with bookcases. On one wall a couple of small windows overlooked the street. In the center was a bank of computers. "Please do not hesitate to come to me with any questions," Ms. Nakamura said in lightly accented English, exchanging bows with Alistair and shutting the door behind her.

  "I told her we were conducting research for a new interactive website on possible burrito fillings," Alistair said, resting both hands on his walking stick as he leaned toward Amy and Dan. "But my question to you is, why are we really here?"

  Amy's eyes darted over to Dan. Alistair had asked this question before, and they had evaded him each time. He knew they were up to something.

  The problem was the swords. Alistair didn't know about them. He hadn't seen the secret engraving on one of the blades. He had no idea that the second Clue had been tungsten.

  He's even more confused than we are,

  Amy thought. Iron solute and tungsten weren't exactly obvious interlocking puzzle pieces. The first was an ingredient in ink, the second was the material that burns in incandescent lightbulbs. How could they fit together? Amy and Dan needed to know so much more -- but one thing was pretty clear. Somehow the swords were the key to the next Clue. Maybe Alistair could help them find out, Dan thought. But the risks were great. Alistair just might take the info and run; he'd done it before. Trust no one -- that had been Amy and Dan's motto. Whenever they'd forgotten it, they'd regretted it.

  And they desperately needed to limit regrets.

  "It was ... a code," Dan said, improvising a white lie. "In the music. Mozart's music. The code said, um, 'Go to Japan.' In the key of C? That's all we know."

  Alistair shrugged, sitting at a laptop. "Not much to go on, but that hasn't stopped us before. Let's each work awhile and then compare notes, shall we?"

  Amy and Dan made sure to sit opposite him, so their monitors were not visible to Alistair. Amy typed into a search bar: japan tungsten sword

  87,722 hits.

  "This is going to be a long day," murmured Amy. Dan typed: ninja warrior images 1,694,117 hits.

  He smiled. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all.

  Body painting and the tatoo was the belonging to slaves and prisoner of Ancint Japan, some of design has been historical replication by ours tattoo artists all who is graduate of colleges in history diploma.

  Dan scrolled down. The images were clearer than the English translation. Some of these designs were amazing, covering a person's whole back. There were dozens --dragons, historical scenes, countrysides, ornate scrollwork ...

  He stopped. Something in one of the images looked familiar.

  Scooting back up the page, he found it and clicked through. Slowly, a magnified version filled the screen.

  "Dan, what do you think you're doing?" Amy asked, looking over his shoulder.

  "Is this cool or what?" Dan said.

  Amy gestured to her laptop screen, which showed a map of Japan. "We're supposed to be locating our clue!"

  "Uh, excuse me, Dora the Explorer, look closely -- these characters? They are the same ones we saw on the sword!" Oops.

  Dan's hands immediately shot up to his mouth. He hadn't meant to say the S word.

  Amy's eyes went all buggy. Dan, you moron! they said silently.

  Dan and Amy glanced at Alistair, who had been intently writing down something he was seeing on his screen. Slowly he looked up. He seemed pale, almost sick. "Uncle Alistair ...?" Dan said. "Are you okay?"

  Alistair did not answer for a few seconds. He took off his glasses and wiped them with a pocket handkerchief. "Fine. Staring at the screen for long periods of time ... it gets harder to do when you're old. Forgive me. Have you, er, found anything?"

  "Yes," said Dan. "No," said Amy.

  "Yes and no," clarified Dan. "Have you?" Alistair nodded absently. "Come. Look."

  Amy and Dan scooted around to see Alistair's screen. He was minimizing a webmail site to reveal a web page that showed a painting of a fierce-looking Japanese warrior holding a severed head.

  "Eww... " Amy murmured.

  "Dude, it's only pixels," Dan said. "But... eww."

  "The, um, Bald Rat," Alistair continued, his voice still faraway and distracted. "Also known as Toyotomi Hideyoshi." "Hidewhoshi?" Dan replied.

  "He -- he was the greatest warrior in the history of Japan," Alistair went on, "but most records show him as rather hideous-looking. Lived in the fifteen hundreds. He began as a peasant and rose to unbelievable power, conquering the various tribes and factions and uniting the country as a major power for the first time." Alistair paused, lowering his voice. "He was also one of your Cahill ancestors -- "

  "I thought I saw the resemblance to Amy," Dan said.

  " -- A Tomas, as a matter of fact. Descended from Thomas Cahill. Thomas traveled to the Far East in the sixteenth century -- some say for the purposes of trade, others say to hide in shame after failing to find his wayward sister. At any rate, he settled there and his family became the Tomas branch, famous for their brutishness and warrior ways."

  Dan looked closer. "The Holt family -- they're Tomases. They look like tree trunks with dinosaur brains. This guy looks like a weasel."

  "It makes sense Hideyoshi would be a Tomas," Amy said. "The strength. The gross way he's holding that head."

  "Evolution is odd. It does not favor the Tomas." Alistair's grim expression loosened a bit, edging into a semismile. "Of course, I am showing my bias as an Ekat. Anyway, I strongly believe our search should begin with Hideyoshi. The man had a lot of secrets. Some say the secrets undid him."

  "Secrets is our middle name, dude," Dan said.

  Alistair leveled his gaze at Dan and then Amy. The color was returning to his face now. "I was going to keep this information to myself. After what happened in Salzburg, I wasn't sure I could trust you two. In fact, today I was tempted to conduct this entire search for the Hideyoshi link without your knowledge."

  "Well, that makes two of us," Dan blurted out.

  "Three," Amy corrected. With a quick, tentative glance toward Dan, she added, "We didn't think we could trust you, Uncle Alistair."

  Alistair nodded. "I have devoted myself to earning your confidence again. Trust is a fragile thing -- difficult to build, easy to break. It cannot be bargained for. Only if it is freely given can it be expected in return." He looked from Amy to Dan. "To break the chain of mistrust, someone has to go first. I am happy to make the move. You deserve no less."

  Solemnly, he turned back to his screen. "Hideyoshi was a bit of a paranoid who liked to hoard things," Alistair continued, scrolling down the screen into the biographical text. "For example, the Great Sword Hunt of 1588, when he forced all the farmers and peasants to give over their swords. He claimed he wanted to melt them down for a large statue of Buddha. But that was a lie."

  "And the truth was Amy said.

  Alistair shrugged. "One of the great mysteries. He also took measures to prevent farmers and peasants from rising to the warrior class. He seemed to be afraid of this."

  "But he rose from the poor," Amy said.

  "You must think like a warrior, sister-san," Dan said. "He was afraid because he rose from the poor. He thought somebody else might, too -- and whup his ninja butt."

  Alistair nodded. "Perhaps he suspected more Tomas offspring -- or worse, Ekaterina --lived in the provinces. The Ekat and Tomas bra
nches were at war even then. Was he trying to hide swords from the Ekats to prevent them from rising against him? We don't know. If only we knew where he hid the swords. The where might lead to the why."

  With a shrug, Alistair turned to face them. "Okay, I've told you all I know." Dan glanced at his sister. The ball was in their court now.

  He's shown us his own secrets, her eyes were saying. We owe him.

  He was looking at his webmail, Dan thought in return. He didn't show us THAT.

  That's different, she argued. We need him.

  Besides his cash and his knowledge of Japanese, what good is he?

  Besides your nicely shaped left earlobe, what good are you?

  Dan glowered at her. You're the oldest, YOU mention it.

  Amy turned to Alistair. "We think ... we found some of the swords," she said. "In Venice."

  "Hideyoshi's swords – in Italy?" Alistair looked flabbergasted.

  With a sigh, Dan mumbled, "They were in the house of some Italian dude, Fidelio Racco."

  "Racco ..." Alistair said. "A Janus. Yet the clue points to a Tomas stronghold. Curious. Here in Japan, there are rumored to be secret Hideyoshi hiding places, but they are allegedly guarded by the descendants of Hideyoshi -- many of them yakuza."

  Dan smiled. Now he was talking. "Whoa -- awesome!" Dan exclaimed. "I battled them at Level Four in ... um, Ninja Gaiden, I think? Those guys are mad gangsta! They'll cut off your arms and feed them to you for lunch."

  "Can't wait to meet them," Amy said.

  "We tried to bring the swords here," Dan barreled on. "They're in my luggage. One of them had some markings. We figured the markings were important -- maybe they give information about the next clue."

  Alistair's eyes widened. "Is there any way we can retrieve these swords?" "Well, maybe we don't have to." Dan nodded to his screen. "The same markings are on this tattoo."

  Dan had never seen Alistair move so fast. He leaned over Dan's shoulders and squinted at the image. "Are you sure this was printed on the sword?"

  "Yup," Dan said. "Well, not exactly. There were some other characters, too. They're missing here."

  Amy shook her head. "How can you be sure? You don't know a word of Japanese."