"Only you could appreciate how much." My head was swimming. Judging from the surrounding technicians' reverent gaze, I got the definite impression they had totally missed the significance of our exchange. Kenji Asano was now wearing a pure poker face. What was he thinking?
My own concentration, however, was elsewhere at that particular instant. The new realization: Matthew Walton is a dead man. As of this moment. Noda would never let me live to tell what I knew.
Just then an official wearing some sort of formal-looking black kimono emblazoned with the kiku crest of the Imperial Household Agency came walking briskly out of the office behind us. He was carrying a silver case, about cigar-box size, something etched across its filigreed lid. He walked over to Noda, bowed deferentially, and settled it on the workbench next to Kenji Asano's briefcase.
Nobody paid him much notice, however, since we were all still admiring the Sacred Sword. Finally my brain started to function. Dates? Right . . . the night I met Noda . . . which got me out of the house ... his hirelings cleaned out my office . . . that was about, what, two weeks before the sword was "discovered." Perfect. Just enough time to salt the thing in the Inland Sea, let his high-tech research team fish it up. . . .
The technician bowed to us once more, then started spreading the satin cloths back over the two compartments. Down came the stainless steel lid. Click. History time was over.
That was when, finally, Ken looked over and noticed the silver case. He stared at it, puzzled, then glanced at Noda, for whom it obviously was intended, and inquired politely concerning what it might be.
Noda cleared his throat, mumbled something about official DNI business, and started thanking the Household rep who'd brought out the case.
However, the Household man showed his breeding. He picked up Ken's question, smiled and bowed, then proceeded to explain that it contained the only copies of DNI's original technical analyses of the sword—X-ray crystallography scans, nondestructive radiation tests, various scientific data he didn't actually understand but which had been used by Dai Nippon to establish the sword's alloy composition and therefore its Sacred authenticity. These data had been forwarded to the Imperial Household with instructions they be kept under lock and key. He'd understood all along that they had merely been on temporary loan to the Emperor, and thus he had no objection now that the honorable Noda-sama had requested their return for additional study by DNI scientists. All of Japan was in the debt of the esteemed Matsuo . . .
Kenji Asano turned to stare at me, his eyes gradually filling with an enormous realization.
You know, I used to have a hobby of reading biographies of the geniuses who'd come up with the truly original insights of modern times. How, I puzzled, did they manage it? I mean, did Newton really watch an apple fall and intuitively sense it was responding to some invisible force? Maybe. Or how about Einstein's insight that matter and energy are really the same thing? Or that space can be curved? Whatever happened, they made a connection that nobody else in history had ever come up with.