Chapter 1

When my father almost died, I made a deal with God.

If he improved, so would I.

Deals are what I know; in the beginning, they were just for Japanese antiques. More recently I've dealt with international secrets, but I'm trying to keep that a part-time affair. This particular deal didn't have a great chance of succeeding, given my father's prognosis, and my own status as a lapsed Buddhist-Episcopalian-whatever. Still, I would give it my all.

If my father lived, I would stop being such a run-around. I wouldn't drink too much, overspend on clothes or pine after men who would never be mine. I already had a guy in my life: Otoosan, my very own Honorable Mister Father.

My father had been out of San Francisco General Hospital for a few days, and I'd been granted leave to nurse him at home, when the letter came. Despite the circumstances, in a strange way it was good to be back at my childhood home on Octavia Street—the renovated Edwardian house that always seemed to smell of furniture polish and narcissi. The only kitchen smell missing was soy sauce. Because of its high sodium content, it was banned from my father forever.

We'd been talking about giving up things we loved, my psychiatrist father and I, during our daily constitutional—a mid-afternoon walk through Pacific Heights. It was slower for my father now, and we skipped the hills altogether. When we arrived home, a sheaf of mail lay on the Tibetan rug in the entry hall. My father started to stoop to pick it up.

"No sudden up and down movements!" I said as I dove down smoothly before him. My father had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and the new precautions he would follow for the rest of his life were varied. My father grumbled lightly, then settled himself on a carved Chinese elm bench to switch his walking shoes for house slippers while I sorted the mail. A bill from Neiman Marcus: I wouldn't let him see it. Less problematic was the bill from Pacific Gas and Electric, and the San Francisco Opera circular. As I was starting to discard junk mail, a slim letter fell out of the pages of the neighborhood's advertising mailer.

The handwriting was unfamiliar, as were the foreign-sounding street, Laaloa, and town, Kapolei. Still, it bore a US stamp. When I scrutinized the postmark, though, it all made sense. Honolulu, HI.

I had been to Honolulu once, for a study-abroad botany course at the end of my high school career. That summer spent traveling through parks and gardens, with a bit of Waikiki bar hopping, was one of my best ever, although my father had grumbled that after earning my certificate, I still couldn't tell the difference between plumeria and the Tahitian gardenia.

"Otoosan, you have a letter from Hawaii." I handed over the letter with a flourish. I was dying for him to rip it open on the spot.

"Honto?" Truly? my father asked, turning it over slowly. He'd been in the US for over thirty years, and while he was fluent in English, he persisted in speaking Japanese with me during the times we were alone together. I thought about answering in Japanese, but decided to stick with English because I was feeling distracted.

"Probably it's a time share offer or something. These marketers have gotten quite skilled at making their envelopes look personal."

"But the name on the envelope is Shimura. What a coincidence."

"Why don't you sit down at the table to properly examine everything?" I suggested. "I'll make you a cup of green tea."

While I waited for the water to boil, I heated the teapot and thought about how slow my life had become. I'd never thought the arrival of a handwritten letter could be the most intriguing part of my day. A few months earlier I'd fought for my boss's life and my own in a dank Tokyo garage, as part of my occasional work as an informant for the Organization for Cultural Intelligence, a secret American government spy agency. The woman I'd been, dressed in a winter-white Yves Saint Laurent trench coat and patent-leather boots, was a far cry from the current me slouching around in a Japan-America Society T-shirt and yoga pants. Now I had plenty of exercise, and time to sleep and read. I was only slightly bored.

I set a tray with the tea, a strainer, and my favorite cha-wan, a rough teacup made by a famous Japanese potter. When I went out to the dining room, my father had clearly finished the letter, and had set it in my place.

"This letter... it's remarkable. It's made me feel better than anything since my surgery." My father looked at me eagerly. "Please, take a look."

"Thanks, Otoosan." When I read the first line in the letter, I suddenly recognized why the envelope had looked so alien. My father's name, Toshiro, was spelled with a short line over the first "o" in my father's name, a symbol sometimes used to signify a long, double vowel. My father didn't write his name this way, because there wasn't a double "o" sound in Toshiro.

Aloha, Toshiro!

Let me introduce myself. I am the son of Yoshitsune Shimura, who was born 88 years ago and is blessed to be celebrating beiju on July 6 of this year. Our families are linked because my father's mother was the late Harue Shimura, who arrived in Oahu in 1918 to marry.

After almost a century apart, it's time for our families to get acquainted. And most folks are happy to learn they have kin in Hawaii! If you like, I will help you find suitable accommodations. I recommend you stay at least a month for the birthday celebration, because there will be lots of family events to fill up your time. Please bring your eldest son, if he can make it too, and call me as soon as you get this letter so we can make arrangements.

Your cousin,
Edwin Shimura

I raised my eyebrows at my father when I'd finished reading. "This is a big surprise."

"What wonderful news that we have more family. Thank goodness I lived for this news."

"Yes, but..." I paused, not knowing how to express what was dogging me. "When I traced our family history a couple of years ago, I didn't recall your grandfather having any siblings other than his brother Koizumi—the one who moved to Kyoto and entered a monastery."

"Actually, there always were some whisperings about a younger sister in my grandfather's family, who was no longer part of the family, when my father was a child."

"Whisperings?" Now this was something I was interested in.

"I once asked my grandfather, but he became upset with me, so I never dared speak of it again."

"So if this lost great-aunt of yours existed, why would she go to Hawaii?" I thought my father was too quickly jumping to conclusions.

"I imagine she was a picture bride. Thousands of Japanese women were exported to marry Japanese expatriates working on sugar plantations. It was a social phenomenon in the first quarter of the twentieth century. I believe there were Korean picture brides as well..."

"Oh, right. I saw a movie about that years ago."

"Harue Shimura—my great aunt, now deceased." My father's voice was sober. "And now we have learned that another branch of our small family exists, in Hawaii."

"But then, why—if Harue Shimura married and had a son—why would their name still be Shimura?"

"As you know, Japanese men do take women's names in marriage, if it's the only way to keep a clan name alive."

"But there were two brothers to carry on the family name—your grandfather and your great-uncle Koizumi, although he of course had no children. Maybe Harue remained a Shimura because she didn't actually get married."

"Why be so negative? I'll find out the facts when we arrive there, I'm certain."

"You can't seriously be planning to go." I caught my breath. "This is the first we've ever heard of these people, and you're still in recovery." I didn't add that his chances of suffering a stroke within the month were about thirty per cent.

"But it's for beiju. A very important birthday. Do you know its meaning?"

"Double luck," I answered. "If one turns the kanji character for the number eight upside down, it looks just like the kanji for luck. So if two eights are rotated, it's twice as lucky."

My father nodded. "Eighty-eight is a marvelous birthday—I can't wait to celebrate mine—and Hawaii is a lovely destination. I see you shaking your head, but please remember how Dr. Chin told you I needed time to relax."

The neurologist had spoken about relaxation when we were reviewing my father's release. But as I'd understood it, relaxation meant eating right, walking, and mild weight-bearing exercise. "It's a six-hour flight. What if you have medical trouble on the plane?"

"Usually there's a physician on the plane who can help with those matters."

"You're the one who always helps. Remember?" Even though my father's medical specialty was psychiatry, he was often the only physician aboard when the occasional in-flight emergency occurred. At least, the only one who volunteered.

"Very well. I shall ask Dr. Chin his advice before deciding when to go."

Chapter Two

My parents had no idea that I had spy training, which at this moment seemed advantageous. I intended to start simply, but would go to whatever lengths were needed to trace the backgrounds of Yoshitsune and Edwin Shimura, to make sure this letter that had fallen into our house came from true relatives, and not hucksters.

That evening, after delivering a steaming cup of chamomile tea to my father's bedside, I made a second cup for myself and went online.

Yoshitsune Shimura's name didn't surface anywhere in my preliminary search, although it didn't surprise me that a man of eighty-eight wasn't a blogger or MySpace member. But Edwin Shimura, the cousin who'd written the letter, was a quick and plentiful hit on Google. Once I'd screened out a seven-year-old chess whiz at the Mid-Pacific Institute and a twenty-five-year-old Nickelback fan, I located our very own Edwin Shimura, a fifty-five-year-old man with a residence on Laaloa Street.

So this is my second cousin, I thought, studying a picture of a man holding a sign over his head that read RETURN OUR LAND! He looked a little like my father around the eyes; but the face was longer, no doubt the influence of whatever other genes had entered our family during the course of almost one hundred years in Hawaii.

I marveled at another picture of Edwin Shimura marching with Polynesian-looking men, holding a sign declaring MY LAND STOLEN TOO.

So Edwin was an activist for Hawaiian land rights. I'd taken a history elective during my long-ago botany program, and I'd learned that foreign missionaries and their descendents living in Hawaii had pressured King Kamehameha III into dividing up land that had previously been held by the crown. The Great Mahele allegedly led to the American overturn of the Hawaiian monarchy and the establishment of Hawaii as a US territory.

As I read on, however, I discovered that Edwin's interest in gaining land was not an issue of righting past wrongs. I followed a trail of articles in the two Honolulu papers, the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser, describing how Edwin Shimura was going to court over rights to a prime parcel of waterfront property on the Leeward Side of Oahu. The land was owned by Pierce Holdings, a company founded by early sugar planters who came to Hawaii from New England in the mid-nineteenth century. Edwin argued that his grandmother, who had once worked on a sugar plantation owned by Pierce Holdings, had been given the property by the Pierce Estate's patriarch, Josiah Pierce, shortly before World War II. But no legal record of such a sale existed, and in the end, Judge David Namioka had ordered Edwin to pay court costs of $20,000 to Pierce Holdings.

In the late 1990s, Edwin was in the news again. He had declared his travel agency bankrupt, which he blamed on decreased Japanese tourism. Eighty-five Hawaii and mainland clients who'd bought air and hotel packages had lost their money.

By 2005, Edwin had reinvented himself. He was running a telesales company offering green-tea-based cleaning products. No news stories covered this venture, but he had various sales pages sprinkled throughout the Internet that led to the same, zero-security payment page.

As bad as this all looked, I craved more. And I'd stayed up long enough for it to be early morning in Northern Virginia, prime time for reaching Michael Hendricks, my good friend-boss-whatever, at home.

"Sis," Michael said, picking up after the second ring. He didn't need to use my old code name, but old habits died hard. "So, how's your father?"

As Michael spoke, I could picture him rubbing his ice-blue eyes to clear the remnants of sleep. Then I imagined the rest of him: the square jaw and prematurely silvering dark brown hair cut short with a razor, even though he'd been out of the Navy for years. He had a lean body that was more like that of a man in his early twenties than thirty-nine, something I knew from a few platonic—and frustrating—evenings we'd spent together.

"My father's OK, but itching to travel," I said.

"So am I. The streets of San Francisco beckon, but travel doesn't seem to be in my cards right now."

Michael and I had become attached during our time working on our last Tokyo assignment—so closely attached, in fact, that Michael had felt duty-bound to report his feelings to our superiors at Langley. The result had been private conversations with a CIA psychiatrist for both of us. According to the psychiatrist, Michael and I shared an almost telepathic bond that had sprung out of our work. Relationships like these were common among soldiers and police; people who worked closely with a partner in dangerous situations. He thought we were no danger to anyone, especially not to each other.

"Well, what's the problem?" Michael asked. "You don't usually call this early."

"I know. I've been up all night. My dad's been out of the hospital a few days and suddenly he wants to fly to Hawaii."

"That doesn't sound like a problem to me." Michael snorted. "I'd go to Hawaii with him in a flash. Did I ever tell you that I lived there when my father was stationed at Pearl?"

"No, you didn't. And let me finish, please." I elaborated about the letter; the newfound family, the eighty-eighth birthday, and Edwin's legal and financial history.

"I could run his name through a few databases for you—but Rei, I don't think having a bad businessman for an uncle should be a deal-breaker. Hawaii's gorgeous in July. As well as every other month in the year..."

"I like Hawaii too. But I'm not willing to go there if it means getting mixed up with a bad character."

"It's an old man's birthday party." Michael sounded reasonable. "Go to the party, get together a few times, and spend the rest of the time relaxing. You deserve the trip to Hawaii as much as your father."

"All I've been doing here is relaxing. I'm bored out of my mind."

"You told me that your father said the letter raised his spirits! You know, there's supposed to be a link between mood and recovery from illnesses. I can email you a study proving it."

"Hmm," I said. "I'm more interested in proof that Edwin Shimura's ancestor, this picture bride called Harue Shimura, was in fact the girl who left my family. That's the gist of it, Michael. We don't even know if we're related."

"Well, that's research you can do yourself, if you're so bored." Now Michael sounded amused.

"Well, I've already emailed a historical society in Honolulu that might have records for Japanese immigrants. And I'll phone my Uncle Hiroshi in Japan, just in case he remembers more about the so-called whisperings."

"Don't forget to check birth records with the state of Hawaii."

"But she was born in Japan—" I interrupted myself. "You probably mean I should check the birth certificate of Yoshitsune Shimura in order to reference the names of his parents?"

"That's exactly what I was thinking. You do your thing, and I'll do my part for you—when I can. I'm afraid that for the most part of this week I'm swamped."

"What's going on?"

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

"Very original. I do miss you, Brooks." I used his code name, holding on to the last bit of intimacy, before the call ended.

"Don't change that feeling."

"What?" I was momentarily confused, especially when Michael made the sound of a kiss and hung up. I had a feeling that the CIA would not approve.

My Uncle Hiroshi had never heard anything about a missing great-aunt. He'd also received a letter from Edwin Shimura, though, and as a result he and his son, my cousin Tom, were already condo-hunting for the visit.

"If you and your father meet us there, it will be wonderful. When's the last time we've all been together?" Uncle Hiroshi asked over the phone.

Frankly, I would have been reassured if my beloved Aunt Norie was coming along, but apparently she was teaching a month of ikebana classes at the Kayama School right at the time of the beiju. And Chika, my younger cousin, was involved in her first job. She was as busy as my mother, who couldn't come because the grand opening of the boutique hotel she was decorating was in mid-June. Tearfully, we spent many late nights together, talking about the past, her fears for my father, and how she felt duty-bound to work harder than she ever had in the event my father couldn't resume his medical school professorship.

I had work to do, too. I exchanged several emails with researchers at the Japanese Cultural Center in Honolulu, who confirmed the existence of a Harue Shimura who'd emigrated from Yokohama in 1919 , at the age of twenty. She was married at the dock by a judge who also recorded the changing of name by her husband from Keijin Watanabe to Ken Shimura. The Territory of Hawaii had a birth record for a child born to her and Ken: Yoshitsune Shimura, eleven months later.

So my father's guess was right, that Harue's husband had taken her name. But according to the record, Yoshitsune was older than eighty-eight. I showed the birth certificate copy to my father, who assured me that in old Japan, in utero time was counted in a person's age. Thus, my father was really sixty-four, not sixty-three. He went on to tell me I was actually thirty-one and not thirty, which really made me crazy.

"It's still wrong," I said to my father. "If you count in an extra year according to Japanese custom, Yoshitsune Shimura should have celebrated his beiju two years ago."

"I'm sure we'll learn their family customs when we arrive." My father's voice was placid.

"I've lost the battle," I reported to Michael the next time we talked on the phone. "We're definitely going."

"Well, don't worry too much about it. I ran the FBI check and neither your Uncle Edwin nor his wife Margaret nor the great-uncle have robbed banks or murdered anyone."

"Great." But I didn't mean it. I'd been hoping for a last-minute reprieve.

"And I have something even better for you. A surprise."

"What?" I asked dubiously.

"I'll see you in Hawaii a week and a half after you get in. If the winds are with me."

I was surprised—and elated. "If the winds are with you? Is that something for me to decode?"

Michael laughed. "I'm talking about the Transpac."

"What the hell is that? It sounds like a military exercise."

"It's the longest sailing race in the world: two  thousand five hundred and ten miles, to be exact. One of my old Naval Academy classmates has been trying to rustle up an extra crew member, and after squaring things here at Langley, I can actually sail with them."

"Super. So are you leaving from Annapolis?"

"No, there's a staggered start for the various classes of yachts in Southern California. My buddy Parker Drummond, who's based in LA, splurged a few years ago on a forty-foot schooner. It should be able to make the trip in under two weeks if the winds are with us and we push ourselves."

"Where in Hawaii does the race end?"

"The finish line is when you pass that huge old volcano, Diamond Head. We'll dock at the Waikiki Yacht Club, and another guy on the crew, my friend Kurt, has squared away rooms for us at the Hale Koa, which is the military hotel right in the heart of everything."

"So you're staying in Hawaii just a week," I thought aloud. "That means you'll be at sea longer than on land."

"Yes, that's the way it works. I wish I had more time to spend on land with you, Rei, but getting these three weeks together is kind of a miracle. I gave Len the full sob story, how Kurt survived three tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was a dream for us all—Eric, Parker, Kurt and me—to sail together once again just like we did in Annapolis."

"It'll be a great bonding experience," I said, trying not to feel jealous that most of Michael's vacation would be with three men, and not me. "I hope you have a wonderful time out in the Pacific."

"Well, it's not like it's going to be a two-week party," Michael said. "It's doubtful we'll get more than four hours' sleep per twenty-four period."

Trying to sound casual, I said, "If you get a chance, call me from your cell when you're pulling into port. I'd like to greet you."

"I hope to be able to reach you using the boat's satellite phone even earlier than that. I'd love you to meet my boat—it's been a long time since anyone's done that." Michael's voice was wistful, and I knew without asking who this must have been—Jennifer, Michael's young wife who'd been killed in an airplane bombing in the late 1990s. Jennifer was the chief reason he still didn't have a girlfriend—and also the reason I'd been sitting on my hands whenever we'd been together. Who could compete with a ghost?

Trying to shake my morbid mood, I asked, "So when does the race start?"

"Three weeks. We'll actually be leaving before you."

"That's weird, isn't it? That I might be passing over you in a Hawaiian Airlines plane?"

"I think it's great. Send me your itinerary and that day, I'll just keep my eye out for planes with purple tails, and I'll toast each one that flies over me."

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All content © 1998-2008 Sujata Massey.
Photo of Sujata by Jim Burger.