On the Fifth Day

The pictures were everywhere by breakfast time. The TV news all showed the NHK footage every ten minutes and the newspaper headlines shrieked. It was a feeding frenzy, and if they had loved Watanabe’s meteoric rise, that only made his graphic fall all the more sensational.

Parts of a third skeleton were recovered from the “unexcavated” area of the mound, including some apparently genuine Kofun ceramics and a contemporaneous terra-cotta statue of the Virgin Mary, probably Italian in origin. The Blessed Mother cradled a pomegranate in her right hand.

Watanabe was facing jail time for fraud of various kinds and Matsuhashi had become a reluctant celebrity in his own right, moving to the head of a short list to take over the Yamanashi Archaeological Institute on completion of his doctorate. That might change when the cameras averted their gaze, of course, but for now, Thomas had a resounding success on his hands, and though he dreamed of the ghoul in the Fontanelle, he woke with a sense of relief and a kind of closure.

So his depression after the news broke was not immediately easy to explain. He shunned the spotlight, letting Matsuhashi take the credit whenever possible, which seemed both politic and ethical. It was the student whose neck had been on the block, who had finally had to stand up to an archaic system of patronage, which could have utterly torpedoed his career.

But the ordeal had taught him nothing useable about Ed, except that he had been in Naples at the same time that Watanabe had been trawling for unnoticed bones and Christian artifacts, and that Ed had pursued him to Japan to demand their return. The crucial link that then took him to some obscure place in the Philippines, the link that had DHS creating a terrorism file with his name on it, was no closer now than before Thomas left Italy.

Kumi was still angry about the way he had left Jim to ensure her safety while he set about laying traps with Matsuhashi. The fact that she hadn’t been hurt was irrelevant, she said. He argued that Jim couldn’t have done what Matsuhashi needed, that only he could have closed the thing out the way he had.

“Of course,” she snapped back. “Always the hero, the leader, aren’t you, Thomas? Always hogging the limelight except when you are really needed, except when I really need you.”

And it was clear then, as it should have been much earlier, that they weren’t really fighting about the evening she had spent with Watanabe at all. They were fighting about what they always fought about, even if they never said so out loud.

But he felt as he had felt all those years ago that it hadn’t been his fault. He had run interference for Kumi. That was how he thought of it. He had protected her, dealing with their friends and family, keeping her out of it while she recovered. It never occurred to him that what she had really wanted was for him to stay in there with her, crying day after day. He worked better by keeping moving, getting past it.

It was ironic when he thought about it, because he never had gotten past it. Not really. It had been the beginning of the end, and not just with Kumi. With lots of things. Marriage, work, God, and, by extension, his brother. And here it was again, ghosting their most recent squabble as it always did, always would.

“I need to get back to Tokyo,” she said. “Devlin has some scheme that’s raising eyebrows and they need me back there.”

They were sitting in a quiet restaurant in Kofu on the main street up to the railway station where the statue of Takeda Shingen sat in full samurai armor.

“Excuse me,” said Jim, getting to his feet and nodding in the direction of the restroom, fooling nobody.

It had been intended as a kind of victory dinner, but a pall had settled over them the moment they had sat down.

“Okay,” said Thomas, staring at the vegetable tempura on his plate. They were out of shrimp, apparently. A national shortage had made them both scarce and expensive. Not that it mattered. His appetite was gone. “Okay,” he said again.

His acceptance clearly irritated her, but she wasn’t about to argue. He ordered another beer. That irritated her too, but she let it slide.

“I’m sorry this hasn’t worked out,” she said. He didn’t know what this meant exactly, and didn’t know for sure that she did. “I think you have to let it go. Go back to the States. I don’t know that you’ll ever really know the truth about Ed. I hate it, but . . . You need to go back to the States. Get a job. Get on with your life.”

He found himself hoping Jim would return so that neither of them would say any more, so that they could go back to their disconsolate dinner, make small talk, stay inside themselves, hollow though they might be. He took a long swallow of his beer, and she looked away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, as soon as he put the glass down. “I have to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Tell Jim . . . I don’t know. Something.”