Back when I was a kid, I'd accepted as an article of faith that America was the greatest, that we were destined to lead the world forever. Was that hubris? Now I had this sinking feeling we were about to begin learning a little modesty. Maybe Amy didn't know it yet, but her America was going to end up being a lot different from mine. All of a sudden folks all over the world were about to be richer than we were. It was going to take some painful adjustment.

That's when I finally decided. Yes, by God, I would track this one. And when I figured out what Noda had up his sleeve. I'd blow the whistle. Somebody needed to stand guard over this country, and if not me, who?

Matt Walton vs. Matsuo Noda.

As it turned out, the evening still wasn't over. Things continued to go off track, beginning with when I walked in my front door. I guess by now everybody's pretty blase about urban crime, but it's still always a shock when it happens to you. I also think it's getting worse. I can remember five years ago when Joanna and I never bothered even to latch the street windows. These days they have bars—a small precaution following an evening on the town during which everything we owned with an electric cord attached walked out into the bracing Manhattan night. That was my first experience with the hollow feeling in your gut when you realize your sanctum has been plundered. It's not the lost toys, it's the violation that gnaws at your karma.

This time, though, it appeared to be minor. No forcible entry. Somebody had actually picked the front-door lock, a fact I only established to my satisfaction after every other possibility had been considered and dismissed. Truthfully, I probably wouldn't have noticed anything at all that night if not for a wayward train of thought on the way home.

I'd been meditating on a particular sword in my collection, a katana, which was totally without distinction except for a little oral history. Reportedly the blade once tasted blood in a rather arcane episode. Noda probably would have approved. The story was, the samurai who'd commissioned it decided he liked it so much he didn't want the swordsmith telling anybody how he'd forged it. So after he'd thanked the guy graciously, deep bows and all the rest, he picked up the sword, bowed one more time, and then hauled back and sliced him in half, clean as a whistle. The kesa stroke, left collarbone straight through the right hip. It's said a samurai could do things such as that in the old days.

My meeting with Noda had made me want to look it over, to refresh my memory concerning that Japanese capacity for the unexpected. So after I let myself in through the front foyer, I tossed my raincoat over a banister, headed down to the kitchen to pour myself a nightcap, and proceeded upstairs to the "office."

I clicked on the light and then . . .

Jesus! The place had been trashed. Drawers open, files

tipped over, piles of paper askew. After the first numbing shock, that perception-delay your senses impose before you can actually accept what you're seeing, I quickly started taking inventory. Okay, what did they get this time?