Chapter 30

The wind whipped my hair around my face as Sébastien and I stepped outside. Dark clouds gathered over the eastern hillside, but it wasn’t raining where we were—yet.

“Did you see that?” I said. “The spirit ball.”

“Is that what you were photographing?” Sébastien asked.

“You noticed?”

“You’re no Hindi Houdini, my dear.”

“Do you think Yoko saw me?”

“I doubt it. She was too distracted by the destruction of her worldly possessions and by you having a coughing fit without a surgical mask covering your mouth, while the horrified locksmith looked on.” The look on Sébastien’s face told me he thought this was hilarious.

“Why are you so calm? Don’t you see what this means? Yoko has Akira’s spirit ball. He always had it on him and would have had it with him when he was killed.”

“There are a number of explanations I can think of,” Sébastien said. “The easiest of which is that there are multiple spirit ball props.”

“Oh.” I looked at the clandestine photo I’d taken. It was too fuzzy to make out any identifying markings on the glass ball. Not that I knew any identifying markings.

Sébastien’s eyes crinkled as he smiled at me. “You’re losing sight of the far more interesting development.”

“The diary is real.”

It was too late in the day to visit the cooking museum where the diary had been found, but I could do so tomorrow. I wished I had Tamarind at my side to help with a library search, or at the very least that I was in an English-speaking country with reference materials in a language I understood.

“It changes everything, Sébastien. This isn’t about the modern secrets of an ancient illusion or even about Akira himself. It’s about a secret from history. That means it’s no longer clear why someone is after Sanjay and why they tried to kill him. Akira’s killer already has the diary, and they can’t think Sanjay knows or cares about history.” Why was Sanjay pig-headedly ignoring me? He was in more danger than he knew.

Sébastien glanced at his phone. “This would blink at me if I had a missed call or text message, wouldn’t it? Jaya? Are you listening? I was certain you were going to ask me when I purchased this ridiculous phone, which is smarter than I am.”

“Sorry, what? Oh, yes. Your phone would blink if you had a message.”

“Then Sanjay hasn’t called me.”

We walked briskly in silence back the way we’d come while Sébastien made a phone call. I had phone calls of my own to make. I tried Sanjay again. The phone went directly to voicemail. I squeezed the phone so tightly I was afraid I’d snap it in half. I was about to hang up in anger, but I was too worried to do that. Instead I left a brief message asking him to be careful because I’d found new information.

I desperately wanted to call Lane, but this wasn’t the time. What could I say to him? But there was a far more practical call I could make. Dr. Nakamura. The professor studied the Dutch in Japan, so I might be able to get his help with Casper Van Asch’s diary. My call went to voicemail, so I stopped walking to leave a message.

I caught up with Sébastien, who was hanging up his own call. I hadn’t heard the conversation, but his face wore a grimace when he turned to look at me.

“I’m afraid we’ve made another faulty assumption today,” he said. “That was Hiro. Sanjay was with him this morning before he met Yoko.”

I groaned. “But Hiro was adamant about not wanting to help Sanjay because he was working for Akira.”

“Hiro believed what he told you at the time. His feelings run deep when it comes to his dead sister. It’s the one thing I’ve seen that makes him irrational. Hiro said you convinced him helping Sanjay was the right thing to do. He was even more concerned when he saw Sanjay.”

“Why?”

“He kept flubbing the close-up magic that requires dexterity. Which is unlike him, even under stressful circumstances.”

“Did you talk to Sanjay?”

Sébastien shook his head. “Hiro doesn’t know where he is now either.”

I mumbled something under my breath about wanting to strangle Sanjay, but my anger was quickly forgotten when I saw what was in front of us. A cozy cafe with replicas of bowls of noodle soups in the window. The vibrant blue brushstroke illustrations on the bowls and the imitation meals inside them looked equally sumptuous.

“I’ve barely eaten anything today,” I said. “How about stopping here?”

“You ate pumpkin pie and then food from the vendor next to Fushimi Inari.”

“Hours ago. Before we climbed a mountain.”

“Fair enough. Après vous, my dear.”

The small soba restaurant seated six people at the counter, directly in front of the chef, with four small tables squeezed into the cozy space. A monochromatic mural of ocean waves and ships covered one wall.

It was late in the afternoon, so it wasn’t surprising that there was only one other customer in the restaurant, a fair-haired man in an expensive suit and more expensive Italian shoes. A foreigner. He spoke Japanese with the chef, and the two men laughed over a shared joke. Or maybe they were laughing over the man’s poor Japanese. I had no way to tell. I knew rationally that he was far more likely to be a businessman, not a murderous mastermind who knew exactly which restaurant I’d select and had gotten there well enough ahead of us to have eaten most of a serving-size bowl of noodle soup…The idea was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?

A waitress motioned that we could sit at any table we liked. I chose one with a view of the European. The tiny table had a wicker basket underneath it, which I’d learned was for purses. My messenger bag fit snugly inside. Once we were seated, the waitress brought us menus that included no English but had pictures of dishes, along with the moist hand wipes that were common at Japanese restaurants.

Shortly after the waitress took our orders—two bowls of the regional specialty Nishin Soba, a noodle soup with sweet and salty herring—the European left.

“Either you were trying to forget about both Sanjay and Lane by checking out that handsome gentleman, or you were considering him as our larcenous killer gaijin.”

“Is it so far-fetched?”

“Yes, it is. You’re so distraught you aren’t trusting your instincts. You’re one of the cleverest people I’ve met in my long life, Jaya Anand Jones—and I’ve met many brilliant people. I know it’s doubly difficult, because Sanjay is in danger and your feelings for him have become confused. And I planted the reasonable idea that the other man you love, and who loves you, is here in Japan to keep you safe. But you need to snap out of this. Stop second-guessing yourself.”

The waitress set two steaming bowls of soup in front of us. The rich scent of the salty-sweet broth calmed me and focused my mind.

“This whole mess,” I said slowly, “has something to do with what’s in the Dutchman of Dejima’s diary.”

“What do you intend to do about it?” Sébastien dipped the wooden ladle spoon into his steaming bowl.

“We find out who Casper Van Asch was. We don’t have his diary, but if it’s worth killing over, there’s got to be more information about him out there. How else would the killer know there was something worthwhile in it?”

“Go ahead,” Sébastien said.

“Go ahead…and what?”

“I can tell you’re eager to look him up. Under normal circumstances I oppose the habits of the kids these days. But these aren’t normal circumstances. I won’t think you’re rude for using your phone while we eat.”

I grinned and grabbed my phone. Five minutes later, my untouched soup had grown cold and I wanted to drop my useless phone into the bowl. I glared at the mural on the restaurant wall. The outlines of waves and ships swirled together, as if the ships were battling a fierce sea. Casper Van Asch would have battled similar storms on his voyages from the Netherlands to Japan.

“No luck?” Sébastien said.

“I should have known better than to get my hopes up. The internet is rarely the answer when it comes to history.”

I set my phone on the table and picked up my spoon. The phone buzzed.

“Jones sensei?” said the voice on the other end of the line.

I hung up two minutes later with a smile on my face.

“I hope you don’t want dessert,” I said, “because there’s someone who can help us.”