The Six Messiahs

chapter 1

SEPTEMBER 19, 1894, 11:00 p.m.

WHAT A DAMNABLE NUISANCE ALL THIS HOLMES POPPY-cock has turned out to be. That such a cipher of a man, a walking talking calculating machine who displays no more humanity than a hobbyhorse, should inspire such passion in the bosom of the reading public is a greater mystery to me than any I ever dreamt up for him to solve.

Even as I write this entry, again, this evening at the Garrick Club—my farewell dinner—the subject of Sherlock's untimely death dominated conversation with the boorish, opinionated insistence of an American running for political office. Conceived at a moment when my only concern was putting food on my family's table, this Holm-unculus, this cerebral marionette has assumed a place in their lives more real to some of my readers than their own friends and relations. Shocking: but then if predictability in all God's creations was what the Man Upstairs was after He would have called it quits after putting up the Himalayas.

How naive of me to imagine that giving old Holmesy the heave-ho off Reichenbach Falls would put an end to the ballyhoo and let me get on with my serious work. Nearly a year now since Sheer-luck took the plunge, and the public outrage at his demise shows no signs of slacking off. Indeed, there've been a few occasions where I've felt legitimate concern for my physical wellbeing. That sturdy red-faced woman brandishing an umbrella on a country road near Leeds. A scarecrow of a man with genuine derangement in his eye trailing my carriage around town. The trembling, hollow-eyed boy who approached me in Grosvenor Square with such a stammering surplus of contained violence it seemed likely his head would detonate before spitting out a sentence. Madness!

What drives me to wit's end is the possibility that, as a result of the fanatical devotion engendered by my Baker Street Frankenstein, the rest of my books, the work into which I've poured heart and soul, may never receive the fair hearing every author hopes for in the court of public opinion. Still, I console myself with the thought that if it weren't for Mr. H. the only shelves my so-called personal writing might be lining are at the bottom of my steamer trunk.

But as to the Burning Question put to me so energetically last night, and likewise at every instance where I see fit to present myself publicly (including, appalling circumstance— mouth wedged open, throat exposed, sharp instruments in the hand of my inquisitor—my recent trip to the dentist!), the answer remains, steadfastly:

No, no, and no.

There will be no Resurrection. The man fell two thousand feet straight down into a crevasse. Dashed beyond repair, no reasonable hope for recovery. He is deader than Julius Caesar. Respect to the gods of logic must be paid.

I wonder how long I'll need to remind these people that, not only is he deceased, the man is a fictional character: He can't reply to their letters, he doesn't actually reside at 22IB Baker Street, and he can finally be of no help to them whatsoever in solving that lingering mystery which haunts their every waking moment—although my earnest advice to them remains that if Pussywillow has indeed gone missing they should look up a tree. If I had half a shilling for every time I've been asked if he... well, come to think of it, I suppose I do.

What awaits me with regard to the death of SH in America? I'm given to understand the passion for Holmes burns even hotter there, although my excitement at the prospect of setting foot on their shore should balance any inconvenience stirred up by Sherlock's leap into the void. The United States and the Americans have captivated my imagination since I was a child; their rambunctious precocity, the driving will that serve as whip hand to the blinding progress of that new republic should act as a strong and revivifying tonic to me.

Five months abroad: My dear wife not nearly as strong as she would like me to believe, but so determined to see me make the career advancement this journey represents. So be it: The frustration of my inability to ease her discomfort is bringing peace to neither of us. This damned disease will run its inevitable course regardless of my efforts, and the distance between us grows regardless of my whereabouts: The more I move out into the world the further she withdraws from it. For now the energy she spends trying to reassure me will be better spent marshaling her own resources. It is her battle to fight, finally, alone.

No regrets, then. The coming days will pass quickly in that way they always do; I shall conduct my tour of America and be home among my loved ones soon enough. Young brother Innes will make a splendid traveling companion: Two years in the Royal Fusiliers have done wonders for the boy. It occurred to me tonight, watching him leap to my defense at the Garrick, that Innes puts me very much in mind of the hotheaded young snapper I was myself ten years ago, when I briefly traveled in the company of a man the memory of whom remains to this day more vivid and beyond compare than any other I have known in this life.

Our train leaves for Southampton at first light; setting sail at noon tomorrow. Looking forward to a peaceful and uninterrupted week of luxurious relaxation.

Until then, Diary...

"Innes, give those bags to the porter, that's what the man's here for; smartly, move along...."

"We've still plenty of time, Arthur," said Innes, lifting a valise.

"No, not the valise; it's got my correspondence, don't let that one out of your sight...."

"I know perfectly well which one is which...."

An elderly porter wrestled their first steamer trunk onto his trolley.

"There's a carriage waiting for us, porter—careful with that footlocker, it's crowded with books." Then, taking Innes aside: "Give the fellow half a crown, not a penny more; these pensioners always make a big show out of struggling with the bags when the truth is they're as fit as a circus strong man— now where the devil is Larry?''

"The train's only just arrived, Arthur," said Innes.

"And he was supposed to be waiting for us here on the platform; drat the man, why send him down a day early if he can't manage to find—"

"Halloo! Halloo, sir! Here we are!"

Larry waving, moving toward them from the station entrance.

Doyle glanced at his watch, grumbling, "We arrived ten minutes ago. On time. Ships have been known to sail off and leave people."

"There's an hour to go yet, Arthur. Look, you can see the ship from here. I honestly think you can relax...." Innes pointed toward the Royal Pier, where the massive double red stacks of the steamship Elbe stood plain against the gray, low-hanging sky.

"I'll relax when we're on board, in our cabin, luggage secured in the hold, and not a moment before," said Doyle, checking tickets and passports for the third time since leaving the train.

"You really are an anxious traveler, aren't you?" said Innes with the smirk reserved for his older brother's more obviously ridiculous behavior.

"Go ahead and laugh; one day you'll miss your train or your ship, and then we'll see if you think I'm quite so amusing; there's a list of potential mishaps that could keep us from our destination that's as long as a lamplighter's candlestick. Arriving somewhere on time is not a matter of good fortune: it is a sheer act of will. Any attitude to the contrary extends an open invitation to the universe to heap disaster upon you indiscriminately, not that it ever needs to be invited...."

"Here we are, sir!"

"'Good Christ, Larry, where have you been? We arrived ages ago."

"Sorry. Absolute devil of a morning, sir," said the short, sturdy Larry, breathless from his upstream swim against the disembarking passengers.

"Oh?" said Doyle, cocking an eyebrow at Innes. "How so?"

"Right; alarm goes off in the hotel at five this morning— bells in your ear, women howling in the halls, all of us mucking about in our woolies—and they won't let us back up to our bunks for nearly three hours; seems some sheik of Araby cooking a curry in his room set the curtains on fire."

"Dreadful," said Doyle, keeping an eye on Innes to chart the impact of Larry's woeful narrative. "What happened then?"

"Everyone late departing the hotel as a result, resultin' in a massive migration down to the station, half an hour's wait to grab a hansom in the carriageway, and even though I precautionary engaged a driver for the day the bugger can't get his rig within a loud shout of the entrance what with the traffic and my eyes can't pick him out of the mix."

"It's a wonder he didn't split an axle."

"Oh, it was a scrum, all right, a regular rugby match," said Larry, who had never once turned down an implied invitation to elaborate. "My driver's nowhere to be spied; I'm about to abandon ship and let down the lifeboats when finally my fella squirts out of the pack, and we're no sooner clear of that fine mess in front of the Ritz when the next thing you know a beer wagon goes bum over teakettle ahead of us on the High Street and nothing can wiggle an eyelash in either direction for two solid blocks."

"Must have taken half an hour to clear the wagon," said Doyle, glancing sideways again at Innes.

"Half an hour easy before we're clear and we're no sooner on the go again when one of his geldings tosses a shoe in the mud and starts limpin' like a three-legged dog. Now my driver goes into a brown sulk and won't be comforted—he's a Welshman, it should come as no surprise—so I'm left with no alternative but to abandon the wretch in the middle of the street, hike the last half mile here in a driving rain and hack my way through a deranged mob of tourists outside to find another cab. It's a good thing I left an hour before your train was due or I wouldn't have been ten minutes late."

"Thank you, Larry," said Doyle.

Feeling his argument to Innes about the vagaries of fate emphatically settled, Doyle flashed a triumphant smile, but in that way peculiar to younger brothers Innes offered no concession of defeat, staring coolly at the horizon, as if the Great Pyramids occupied a distant hillside.

With the porter behind them, Doyle gave a dry snort and pointed them toward the exit. Strapping young Innes ran interference, plowing a path through the crowd like a cowcatcher on a locomotive.

"You can thank the fact our new driver's a fan of the Adding Machine," said Larry, using one of their coded references to Doyle's famous fictional creation. "Took the promise of an autograph to get him to wait."

Before Doyle could inquire, from under his raincoat Larry produced a Strand magazine featuring a vintage Holmes story. Five years in Doyle's employ had produced an almost supernatural ability in the former Cockney burglar to anticipate his master's every need: "Already took the liberty."

"Good man," said Doyle, taking a pen from his pocket. "What's the fellow's name?"

"Roger Thornhill."

Doyle took the magazine from his loyal secretary and scrawled an inscription—"For Roger, The Game's Afoot! Yours, Arthur Conan Doyle"—as they pushed through the station doors.

"Still plenty of time," said Innes calmly.

"Only thing is," said Larry, "with my having to raise my voice above the ruckus for the drivers to hear me I'm afraid word leaked out about your arrival—"

"There he is!"

And with that cry, a crowd of fifty, many with Strand magazines in hand, closed in on Doyle as he cleared the doors, an impenetrable clamoring mob between them and their cab— driver Roger standing atop, waving his arms frantically— while in the distance, the tantalizing stacks of the Elbe, their ever-so-much-closer-to-departure destination.

"Game, set, and match," said Doyle to Innes, before putting on his public face and wading forward to meet the onslaught, pen at the ready, with a friendly word for every comer and a determination to courteously satisfy every one of their requests, as swiftly as humanly possible.

Between signatures inscribed, greetings exchanged, anecdotes endured ("I've got an uncle in Brighton who's a bit of a detective himself...."), and offered amateur manuscripts kindly but firmly refused, half an hour flew by. A ten-minute carriage ride to the docks passed without incident, filled by their driver's monologue about his astonishing good fortune, variations on the theme: "Wait'll me missus hears about this."

Upon arrival at the customhouse, they jumped so smoothly over every hedge of the bureaucratic steeplechase involved in departing mother country that Doyle felt a twinge of disappointment: He had worked up a terrific head of steam for annihilating the first bureaucrat who tried to obstruct them but he had had no occasion to use it.

Something was wrong; this was too easy.

There Doyle stood, clerk before him—papers in one hand, stamp in the other—one fence away from the finish and the ship's departure still five minutes off, when out of the corner of his eye Doyle spotted and, with the unerring instincts of hunted prey, instantly recognized the lone journalist lying in wait for him, poised like a jungle cat.

"Mr. Conan Doyle!"

The man pounced; pad in hand, rumpled suit, mangled cigar stump, panama hat, and the bounce and confidence of a terrier on a scent. He was a newshound, all right; an American, the most dangerous of the breed.

Doyle glanced quickly around: Damn, Larry and Innes preoccupied with the bags. Penned in by the queue; nowhere to run.

"Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle!"

"You have my attention, sir," said Doyle, turning to face him.

"Fantastic! Off to the States today—your first visit! Any thoughts?"

"Far too many to mention."

"Sure! Why not? Looking forward to it? Have to be! They're gonna love you in New York—great city—huge! You can't believe it; straight up!" He gestured emphatically toward the sky with both hands. "Look at it go!"

The man was insane, realized Doyle. Completely off his squash. Smile, Doyle; always humor a lunatic.

"So! Big plans, huh? Reading tour, fifteen cities. How 'bout that? If you aren't the second coming of old Charley Dickens!"

"One cannot aspire to follow in the immortal footsteps of Boz with anything but the deepest humility."

The reporter's eyes glazed over, but total incomprehension seemed his natural state and troubled him not in the least.

"Sensational!"

"If you'll excuse me, I must be getting on board...."

"Which one do you like the best?"

"Which one what?"

"Holmes story; got a favorite?"

"I don't know, perhaps the one about the snake—sorry, for the life of me I can't remember the name of it...."

The man snapped his fingers and pointed at him: " 'The Speckled Band'; fantastic stuff!"

"I don't suppose you've read any of my ... other books."

"What other books?"

"Right. Sorry, I really must be going...."

"Okay, now tell the truth, what do you hope to find in America?"

"My hotel room and a small measure of privacy."

"Haw! Fat chance. You're big news, Mr. Doyle: Sherlock mania. It's like a fever, friend. Get used to it. They'll be lining up to take shots at you."

"Shots?"

"Everybody and his brother wants to know, see: Who is this guy? What makes him tick? And what kind of a weird, twisted mind can think up stuff like this?"

"How appalling."

"Hey, why do you think the paper booked me on this ship? Get a first look at you, that's the idea."

"Booked you a passage on this ship?" Oh, no; too late to change plans.

"Okay, so here's my proposition," said the little man, sidling up confidentially. "Help me out with a few exclusives on the way over and I can make things pretty easy for you on the other side. I got connections in New York. Animal, vegetable, mineral; you name it. Sky's the limit. Silver platter."

The man winked at him. What an extraordinary creature.

The customs agent handed back Doyle's transport papers with a sheepish, gap-toothed grin. "Din't have to kill him, didja, guv?"

"We all have to go sometime," said Doyle agreeably, tucking the papers away and striding quickly toward the gate.

The reporter dogged his steps, holding a card in front of

Doyle's face. "Name's Pinkus. Ira Pinkus. New York Herald. Think about it, will you?"

"Thank you, Mr. Pinkus."

"Could I invite you to join me for dinner tonight?"

Doyle waved and smiled.

"Or how about drinks? A cocktail? What do you say?"

The guard at the gate stopped Pinkus from following. Could it be? Yes! The man hadn't cleared customs yet. The gap widened; Doyle grinned. Was any human experience more purely pleasurable than escape?

"Say, any plans on bringing Sherlock back?" shouted Pinkus. "Can't leave him buried up there in that Swiss Alp! We want more stories! Your readers are ready to riot!"

Doyle never looked back. A knot of activity ahead: Larry at the trolley, Innes paying the porter. Dock hands shouldered their bags up the gangway. Farther down the pier a row of plain wooden coffins were being loaded from a jitney directly into the ship's cargo hold; bodies going home for burial.

Odd, thought Doyle; the dead shipped home unnoticed on every transatlantic crossing but were usually loaded in the night before, out of the paying customers' sight. Must be last-minute arrivals.

Concerned officers looked down at Doyle from the quarterdeck; one consulted a watch. Two minutes to noon. Along with the corpses, it looked as though they would be the last passengers to board, save Ira Pinkus.

Or, with any luck, excluding him.

"I'm afraid there isn't time for me to see you on board," said Larry.

"We'll say our good-byes, then. Here's this morning's correspondence," said Doyle, handing him a generous packet of letters.

"Right sorry I'm not going with you." Larry stared at his feet and looked as mournful as a bloodhound.

"No more than I, Larry," said Doyle, banging him affectionately about the shoulders. "Don't know how I'll manage without you, but someone needs to mind the home front. No one better than you, old boy."

"Hate to think there'll come a moment you might need me and I won't be at hand, that's all."

"I'm sure Innes will do a bang-up job in your stead."

"Or die trying," said Innes, with a crisp salute.

"We'll write every day. You do the same. These are for the children," he said, handing over a bag of gifts and sweets.

"We'll miss you something terrible," said Larry, lower lip trembling.

"Keep the missus away from the damp, now, there's a good fellow," said Doyle, clutching Larry's arm, his voice husky with emotion. He turned away to hold back the tears. "Here we go, Innes. Onward. Off to conquer America."

"Bon voyage, sir," said Larry, waving enthusiastically even though they were only a few feet up the gangway. "Bon voyage."

The purser greeted them warmly as they boarded. The stalwart figure of Larry stood on the dock below, swinging his arm like a pendulum.

Behind him, a darting figure sprinted from customs for the gangway.

Ira Pinkus. Damn.

Doyle walked out onto the upper deck and took a deep breath of bracing salt air, alone for the first time since the tugs had led them from shore. A man of thirty-five, his six-foot-two-inch frame filled out by two hundred pounds of muscle well conditioned by a strict regimen of boxing and gymnasium work. His moustache thick, black, and well-groomed; his face more rounded now, ridged and shaped by experience; his eyes set with an authority justified by a worldly success his dress and manner suggested he had found more than agreeable. Doyle had about him the magnetic, unselfconscious aura of a man destined for great things, but he still considered himself first and foremost a family man and this long separation from his wife and three young children posed a trying deprivation.

The trimmings of fame did nothing to protect one from the plague of life's unhappy little surprises, as Doyle had quickly discovered, let alone the deeper discomforts of loneliness or emotional turmoil, while the daily maintenance of what seemed a prosperous life demanded such enormous expense of capital that the margin between income and outgo was shaved down to the same razor's edge that haunted every man's existence.

Not that Doyle expected sympathy for the trials of newfound affluence, however far short his actual worth fell from people's speculations—a jolly great distance indeed. No, he had made his bed and he was lying in it, eyes like dinner plates. He still didn't understand why the arrival of cash only momentarily preceded its abrupt departure—often for ridiculous objects put right to work collecting dust, neatly disappearing along an orderly line of retreat: closet, packing box, garage, garbage heap—but it did. And this from a native Scotsman, a man with thrift embedded in the fiber of his being, who had labored heroically throughout his life to avoid the unnecessary and extravagant.

No use fighting it: The migration of money must be respected as one of the fixed laws of nature. A man labors to earn enough to satisfy his basic biological needs—warmth, food, shelter, sex—then, in order to reward himself for his backbreaking work, carries right on spreading any surplus cash around for nonessential luxuries, until the basics are so thoroughly jeopardized it drives him back to start the damn business all over again. As trapped by our genetic destiny as salmon swimming upstream to die.

A week at sea: Good Christ, how he looked forward to it. To leave behind those grinding, commonplace headaches for a while. A fellow never realizes how responsibilities accumulate like stones in his pockets until he takes a swim. A week of his obligatory correspondence alone—sixty letters a day on average—would be enough to sink any ordinary man.

And what a tremendous vehicle for his escape, this grand steamship, an opulent juggernaut cutting through the swell, nearly immune to the vicissitudes of wind and weather; a refined, dignified experience in contrast to the cramped frigates and sloops he'd sailed during his tours as a young ship's doctor. Fifteen years ago now; those long months afloat felt like a dream he'd had a century ago.

He rested a foot up on the rail and watched England recede, telescoped his new spyglass and trained it on the promenade that hugged the Southampton shore below the harbor. Tourists parading on the boardwalk fronting the seaside resorts, taking the air. He pulled focus on the glass, saw the blankets in their laps, the black cloths stretched across the mouths of the consumptives in their rolling chairs....

A stab pierced his chest. Not three months ago, wheeling his wife, Louise, in one of those rollers along a walkway in Switzerland. Cold blue sky. Mountains looming overhead; how he'd resented the majestic indifference of those stolid rocks. Hated how the sanitarium staff treated Louise with their standardized, patronizing cheeriness ...

Finally, he'd grabbed one of them by the arm, a shovel-faced Austrian nurse, shook her, hard: You're talking to the disease! Talk toher, there's a person in this chair! Louise embarrassed, the woman backing away, pale hands fluttering. He hated them all! They didn't know his wife, made no attempt to engage her, not a moment's appreciation for what she'd already endured, this gallant, brave, good-hearted woman.

Why did people turn away from suffering? The ravages of disease were cruel, hard to witness; how many times had he himself been guilty of retreating behind the mask of a doctor's authority, when what the person before him needed more than medicine was a steadying gaze that looked past their affliction to the heart, where a soul cried out for comfort. His anger at that nurse's indifference had been inspired, in equal part, by his own failings. None greater than his inability to save his wife from a wasting disease for which there was no cure, that carried her farther and farther away from him by imperceptible degrees. How long now since they had truly been man and wife? Three months? Four?

The shipyards of the Portsmouth Naval Base came into view to the southeast. Lord; so many lazy afternoons passed there during his medical apprenticeship, gazing down from his office window to watch the gunboats maneuver in the harbor. When you treat one patient in six months there's not much else to do but sit and watch the gunboats. Nearly ten years since he'd moved there after that business with the Seven. Was it possible?

A flood of memories released: little Innes—only twelve then—working that summer as his hallboy; fresh-faced in his stiff blue suit, eagerly waiting to greet the clients who never arrived. Warm morning sunlight inching lazily across the kitchen wall of their Southsea cottage. The sharp tang of the kerosene lamp on his red maple desk where he sat up nights, writing, writing endlessly, dreaming of the new life his work might bring them. The tiny bedroom where their firstborn, Mary, was conceived and came into the world. Laughing as he carried Louise over that threshold, their marriage just beginning in a bubble of youthful ignorance, sentiment, and blind faith.

The horizon went blurry, his eyes misting over—mustn't think of her now, come on, old boy, put some backbone in it.

Passengers filled the decks below him. Excited chatter. Ship seemed at capacity. Germans mostly. Well-heeled. Only two dozen English had come on at Southampton. The Elbe, out of Bremen, a German steamer; the Nordeutscher Lloyd line, an entirely new breed of ship. Nine thousand tons. Twin screws; with a top speed of seventeen knots she cut a fast line through the hard gray chop of the Channel. First-class accommodations for 275, only 50 second-class cabins. An impeccable, disciplined crew. German lines nearly monopolized the North American commercial routes; one expected a high standard of professionalism from the German people: They were a nation on the march....

On a lower deck he caught a glimpse of Innes. Someone pressing in on him, handing him a card, hard to see the man from this angle—good Christ, it looked like Ira Pinkus.

"Heading home or taking leave of it?"

Doyle turned sharply; he thought he'd been alone at the rail. The man stood ten feet away, big-bellied, ruddy-faced. A receding halo of grizzled red hair. Graying muttonchop whiskers. Looked fifty. A lilt of Irish in the voice.

"Leaving," said Doyle.

"Sorrowful partings often precede long journeys," the man said.

Doyle nodded a polite agreement. Yes, Irish. The man shifted slightly, still facing out to sea, and Doyle saw the priest's collar, thick boots, the black beads and crucifix protruding from his pocket. Damn, the last thing he wanted to hear now was some empty, unsolicited homily from a Roman—

"Sometimes the pleasure of sadness is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself," said the priest. "Something new has entered us. We're able to look at the unknown without prejudice or preconception. Welcome it as an opportunity. And we may find in ourselves an undiscovered territory, a place closer to the heart of the terrible mystery of who we really are."

The man's warm tone struck a deep note of authenticity. This wasn't the usual pious blather; real sympathy weighed in behind his words and moved Doyle in spite of his resistance. He found it difficult to respond; how could this priest know so precisely what he was going through? Were his feelings so transparent? The man kept his eyes toward the shore, respecting the borders of Doyle's privacy.

"Sometimes we leave the best of ourselves behind," said Doyle.

"Journeys may have a purpose unimagined at departure," said the priest. "They can save a life. Sometimes they can even save a soul."

Doyle allowed the words to slip in and soothe him; his inner voice went quiet. The lazy rhythms of the Channel captured his eye and a peaceful stillness descended over him.

A fracture of sunlight danced off the water and broke his reverie. He wasn't certain how long he'd been standing since they'd spoken; the shoreline had changed. Open countryside now, rolling hills. Ocean beckoning ahead. He looked over.

The priest was gone.

One deck below where Doyle stood alone, a tall, handsome, smartly dressed man, blond and big-shouldered, walked out of a stairwell leading down to the Elbe's cargo hold. He slipped smoothly into the crowd, speaking casually to people around him in flawless German that bore the clean, clipped aristocratic accent particular to natives of Hamburg. Having effortlessly made himself seem a part of their group without leaving any particularly vivid impressions, his strong features coiled in a mask of perpetual amusement, the man ordered a drink, lit a cigarette, and leaned against a column, studying his fellow passengers.

Intent on the receding shoreline, not one of these self-satisfied burghers had noticed him arrive from belowdecks, the man decided. That was good. No one had seen him in the hold, either. And so far no ship's officer had paid him so much as a passing glance.

Landfall faded from sight; he scanned the passengers carefully as they drifted from the rails. Many moved inside to the bar, turning their attentions to the empty-headed fun they all seemed determined to enjoy on board an Atlantic crossing.

There they were: the two young men—distinctly less well dressed than these vacationing bourgeoisie—in the corner near the lifeboats. The stink of merchants about them, talking in that earnest conspiratorial way he had seen so often while observing them in London; two Jews making an effort to assimilate, but he knew better.

Had they realized they were being watched? Not now. But something had scared them off, alerted the two men in London to make them book this passage so quickly. Assembling his team and following them here on such short notice had not been easy: He had managed.

In the midst of conversation the two men glanced his way; he casually moved his gaze to a passing woman, tipping his hat. When he looked back, their attention had not fixed on him; they were walking away, still absorbed in their discussion.

He watched them retreat. Finding their cabins was next. Then he would involve the others.

He tossed his cigarette over the side and strolled after the two men.

They were making it easy for him.

AT SEA, APPROACHING SAN FRANCISCO

Half a world away, from the deck of another ship—the Canton, a squalid tramp steamer, carrying only steerage class, a bucket of rust bound from Shanghai—as it sailed east and entered the straights that opened into another great deepwater port, a man stood quietly alone at the starboard rail, silently intoning a prayer as he watched the rounded headlands of a strange country draw near. A hoard of impoverished, ragtag immigrants swarmed around him, cheering as the mythical land of plenty glided into view. After enduring two weeks belowdecks in a pestilent hellhole of contagion and crime, it seemed for the first time conceivable that the gamble they'd made with their lives might have been worth the taking.

The man stood alone near the center of the pack, yet none of the others pressed in or jostled him. He was of moderate size, unextraordinary appearance, and occupied little space himself, but when he so desired it that space was never violated. Neither young nor old, nothing about him lingered long in one's memory: Even here, in the middle of an alert and agitated mob, his presence hardly registered. This was one of his most practiced abilities; to leave a hole in the air, rendering himself virtually invisible whenever the situation demanded. Yet even then he was left alone; the respect he commanded was granted to him unconsciously.

His parents and natural family were as unknown to him as these strangers on deck; no given name had followed him when he' was abandoned in an alley after birth. He had early on displayed such a self-reliant and single-minded strength of will that the brothers of the monastery who had raised the boy from infancy named him Kanazuchi—"the Hammer."

When the ship docked and they passed through immigration in San Francisco, no official would question that he was anything other than what he appeared to be: one of four hundred indigent Chinese laborers from Quongdong province on the Mainland. With his shaved forehead and topknot queue, he knew he could depend on the white man's inability to distinguish one Asian face from another.

That he was Japanese, a race of people still seen only rarely in this country, would not occur to a single one of them. That he was a Holy Man from an ancient monastic order on the island of Hokkaido was unimaginable.

That he was one of the most dangerous men alive he could rest assured was an idea that would never take shape in the mind of a single living being.

Kanazuchi ended his meditation with a grace that pleased his keen sense of aesthetic balance. As the ship sailed closer to America, the visions that had plagued his dreams for the last three months had grown more disturbing than ever before; only these meditations had any calming effect.

The agitation on deck increased; the outskirts of a city drawing closer on the rolling green hills. Shifting the light, oblong bundle on his back, Kanazuchi wondered if he would be asked to open it for inspection as they cleared immigration. Many of the skilled workers on board—carpenters, masons—had carried their tools along with them. Perhaps they would all be allowed to pass without having to display their belongings; if not he would find a way to avoid the authorities.

Kanazuchi was prepared. He had come too far. His mind was closed to the possibility of failure. And he knew that if anyone saw the sword concealed in his bundle, he would have to kill them.