Collector of Secrets Read Free Page B

poorly educated, and vastly overconfident. He didn’t care that his daughter, Yoko, had insisted he keep up his linguistic skills, even at ninety years old. Her mask of concern only served to remind him that she simply wanted him out of the way. Her English school was transforming into a corporation, and she didn’t appreciate his meddling. She told him the language training would keep him sharp, and she was not a woman to take no for an answer.
    At their introductory meeting, Mr. Murayama had made a point to sit with arms folded and a dour look on his wrinkled face. However, surprisingly, the boy was not at all as he had presumed. In fact, Max was bright and articulate, with a great interest in history and an even greater number of questions. His infectious curiosity about Japan’s past—the Glorious Empire—grew on the old man, who now looked forward to the Thursday meetings. It was a time to relive old victories and remember friends and places long since gone.
    Setting down his pen, he ran his fingers along the latest entry in his personal catalog. Goose bumps prickled his aging arms. A sweet and familiar sense of satisfaction rushed down his back. Gathering rare and beautiful artifacts had been a childhood hobby that had grown into a full-time passion. The addition of new possessions never lost its youthful thrill. Unable to resist temptation, he flipped the pages backward before his eyes came to rest, yet again, on the most significant entry—all those years ago.
    The diary—when I’m gone the world will finally know its truths.
    He shuddered and slammed the catalog shut.
    Rising from the desk, he shuffled into the hallway, turning left toward the kitchen, intent on setting the kettle. From the window of what had been the secretary’s office, he watched the buzz of traffic along the two-laned street below. Soon, the steaming whistle caught his attention. After pouring water and adjusting his black, square-framed glasses, he opened a hidden door. With a firm grip on the tea tray, he shuffled his slippers back into the office sanctuary.
    Faded cherry-wood paneling and an assortment of filing cabinets framed the room. Cavernous by Japanese standards, the office was thirty-five feet deep and twenty feet wide. Near the front, a black leather sofa and two matching chairs huddled around a wooden coffee table, set before a row of street-side windows. Several feet back, in the center of the room sat a gray metal desk, buried beneath an avalanche of loose paper. Behind the desk was a waist-high beige drafting cabinet, while on the side wall opposite the hallway door, the years of his distinguished diplomatic service were displayed in hundreds of pictures hung above an unbroken row of two-drawer cabinets.
    Setting down the tray, Mr. Murayama lowered himself slowly into the first of the soft leather chairs. It wouldn’t be long, he thought, before his slippers stopped bringing him to this office, which had been his shelter for twenty years, since the end of his career.
    Looking up, he let his gaze roam over the long wall, and he wondered what would eventually become of the many framed pictures. He considered all the treasures filling this office and the storage room at the far end of the hall. They were overflowing with artifacts he’d gathered. Once he was gone, Yoko would take the art prints in the drafting cabinet, but she would throw away or sell the rest. She moved too quickly, wanted too much, and didn’t know the true value that the past could hold. That’s why he kept the key ring to himself. Even if Yoko was in her mid-sixties, he could still see in her the same little girl, desperately trying to prove herself superior.
    A picture on the end table caught his eye, taken in 1961, during his first posting to Washington, D.C.. Distant memories sometimes felt more real than the present, and at other times they drifted away like smoke in the wind.
    There I am, and the man next to me is . . . who is he?
    A wave of