Summary
The story returns to 1973 as St. Paul Braeden and Tolstoy assess the lives lost during the raid. Braeden says only two white men were killed, but they lost eight of their Vietnamese and two of their Chinese communist fighters. Braeden laughs when Tolstoy warns him that the man who got away will come back looking for them. Meanwhile, Sand rides his horse along the highway into Tokyo. When oncoming headlights approach, Sand forces the driver off the road and to a stop. He asks the farmer to take him to Tokyo, offering to give him Oki, the golden mare. When the man hesitates, Sand touches the edge of his sword to the man’s throat.
The story shifts back in time to 1970 as the narrator introduces William Baron Clarke, former president of the United States. After serving two terms, Clarke is sixty-one and is worth five hundred million dollars. While at his ranch in Texas, Clarke receives news about “the Black Samurai” from Watson Pelliter, an Ivy League contact who Clarke set up with the American legation in Tokyo. Clarke arranges with Konuma for Sand to spend three weeks with him at his ranch. Clarke then explains to Sand that he is planning a war against the world’s most powerful and rich men on behalf of people who can’t fight back. He says he needs Sand because he can’t trust anyone else because they’re scared or corrupt.
That night, Sand senses Clarke is going to test him. Sand prepares for an attack by removing the lightbulbs in his room, stuffing pillows in the shape of a body under his covers, and breaking a chair to use one of the legs as a weapon. Four giggling white racist Texans, each having been paid one hundred dollars, sneak in the room to kill Sand, who is waiting in a dark corner as they attack the decoy pillows. Sand easily and swiftly dispatches the men, who shout racist slurs as he attacks. Clarke surveys the scene after and is pleased with the results. Sand says he’ll go back to Japan the next day, and will do as Konuma says.
Konuma sends Sand back to the ranch six months later. They continue meeting in different places throughout the world twice a year, Clarke keeping Sand informed about who he might need to kill. It is from Clarke that Sand learns about Colonel Tolstoy, whose military career ended because of his involvement in the My Lai massacre and other atrocities in Vietnam. Clarke keeps Sand informed of Tolstoy’s growing power and viciousness.
In 1973, Sand arrives at Clarke’s luxury suite on the top of Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel. It is their second meeting in three days. After hearing of Konuma’s death, Clarke says there is more bad news: Tolstoy is planning to use “terrorists and die-hard revolutionaries to wipe out an entire small American town,” recreating in America the My Lai massacre. Clarke plays a tape recording of one of his operatives reporting information about Tolstoy and Braeden’s plans. Clarke also explains that Tolstoy kidnapped Konuma’s granddaughter, who is married to South Vietnamese politician Sanghan Bi. In a shaky voice, Clarke says he also believes Tolstoy is planning to kill Clarke’s daughter, Mary.
The scene cuts to Tolstoy and Braeden pushing crates full of their dead fighters out of a stolen combat bomber plane in mid-air. The crates, though difficult to shove, disappear immediately as they exit the plane and plummet to the ocean. They discuss the plan to destroy a town in upstate New York. Each participant is being paid by Tolstoy in heroin, and each hates the US. The top members of the team are James Winters, an IRA terrorist, Rashid OmarCid, a member of the Black September group, and Long Minh Sat, a South Vietnamese Army colonel who is wanted by both North and South Vietnam for his “energetic use of torture.” St. Paul Braeden, who is Black, is eager to “wast[e] some white asses.”
Tolstoy challenges Braeden’s claim that he is getting revenge because of racial injustice, pointing out that Braeden’s bank robbing past involved killing a Black mother. Braeden brings up Tolstoy’s lack of morals with his massacres, and Tolstoy kicks him in the balls and knocks him out by hitting him with his gun. This proves a point to the men watching from inside the plane: Only one man is in charge. In addition to the fighters under Tolstoy’s employ, there is their captive, Toki Jakata Bi, who lies unconscious on brown US Army blankets.
Meanwhile, Sand watches as Clarke commands his authority over the phone, making arrangements for false passports and hotel reservations that will make Sand and Clarke hard to trace in Saigon. Clarke also arranges for Sand to receive weapons and cash. Clarke explains how Tolstoy sees killing his daughter as revenge for Clarke prosecuting Tolstoy over the massacres and killing Bi as revenge against the South Vietnamese government who put pressure on the States to see the massacre perpetrators brought to justice.
Clarke says he doesn’t know where his daughter is and whether Tolstoy’s men have got her yet; she is supposed to be vacationing in Europe, maybe Paris or London. Sand says he will try to find her. The scene cuts to Sand on a flight out of Japan. It is painful to leave the country as he thinks about Konuma being dead. He resolves to kill Tolstoy to repay Konuma for the honor of getting to learn his ways. Sand tries to sleep but wakes up sweating.
Analysis
Having established Sand’s origin story, Olden returns to the present-day storyline of 1973. The theme of revenge returns as Tolstoy and his second-in-command, St. Paul Braeden, discuss the lives lost during their raid—a tally with racist overtones, as the men clearly put less value on the lives of their non-white fighters. Tolstoy suspects Sand’s desire for revenge will be strong, warning Braeden that he is certainly coming after them.
The theme of resilience enters the story as Sand makes his way to Tokyo despite the wound he suffered during the raid. Rather than lie in the forest and try to regain his energy, Sand pushes through his pain, putting the need to stop Tolstoy above his immediate personal needs. Because the samurai are the last remaining practitioners of a medieval way of life, they do not have vehicles. Instead, Sand rides one of the horses they use during their training. A symbol of the traditional ways of the samurai meeting the modern world, Olden emphasizes the discordant image of the Black Samurai riding a horse along a Tokyo highway. In an instance of situational irony in which the reader’s expectations are undermined, Sand is going to meet, of all people, a man who was once president of the United States.
The theme of service returns as Olden provides further details about Sand’s origins. Once word of the Black Samurai reached ex-President William Baron Clarke through his extensive network of international contacts, Clarke devised a plan to use his power and influence as a force for good. Because he couldn’t trust the easily corruptible and frighten men in extant organizations, Clarke sought out the help of Sand to punish, intimidate or stop powerful men who posed a threat to world stability. Konuma approved of turning Sand into Clarke’s assassin because he knew Sand’s samurai training was going to waste if he wasn’t using it in the service of others.
The themes of revenge and terrorism return as Sand learns the reason behind Tolstoy’s raid on the samurai houses—the kidnapping of Toki Jakata Bi. The imposing Clarke also shows his vulnerability in admitting that he has learned Tolstoy plans to come after his daughter Mary as part of the terrorist plot; in this way, Tolstoy will get his revenge against Clarke for representing the government that sought to hold him accountable for the My Lai massacre.
Meanwhile, the ruthless terrorists are disposing of their dead fellow fighters by pushing their bodies in crates out of a plane over the ocean. This detail shows how Tolstoy treats his men as disposable tools to be used and discarded at will. The scenes of Chapter Eight also involve Olden using shifts in character points of view to create dramatic irony, which he does throughout the book. As the terrorists make their way to Saigon to carry out the next stage of their plan, they are oblivious to the fact that Clarke is making arrangements for Sand to meet the killers in Vietnam. While Tolstoy may have some understanding of Sand’s dogged resilience, he isn’t aware that the samurai has the material support of one of the world’s richest men.
