Hard Rain

14

I MADE MY way back to the Imperial, entering the hotel through the Hibiya Park side. In my mind, anyplace where I’m staying is a potential choke point for an ambush, and my radar bumped up a notch as I moved through the spacious lobby to the elevators. I automatically scanned the area around me, first keying on the seats offering the best view of the entranceway, the places where an ambush team would position a spotter, the person tasked with supplying a positive ID. I saw no likelies. My radar stayed on medium alert.

As I approached the elevators, I noticed a striking Japanese woman, midthirties, shoulder-length hair wavy and iridescent black, skin smooth and pale white in contrast. She was wearing faded blue jeans, black loafers, and a black V-neck sweater. She was standing in the middle of the bank of elevators and looking directly at me.

It was Midori.

No, I thought. Look more closely.

Since that last time, about a year earlier when I had watched her perform from the shadows at the Village Vanguard in New York, I’ve seen a number of women who resemble Midori at first glance. Each time it happens, a part of my mind fills in the details, perhaps wanting to believe that it really is her, and the illusion lasts for a second or two before closer inspection convinces that hopeful part of my mind of its error.

The woman watched me. Her arms, which had been crossed, began to unfold.

Midori. There was no question.

My heart started thudding. A fusillade of questions erupted in my mind: How can she be here? How can it be her? What is she doing back in Tokyo? How would she know where to find me? How would anyone know?

I shoved the questions aside and started checking the secondary areas around me. Just because you’ve spotted one surprise doesn’t mean there isn’t another. In fact, the first one might have been a deliberate distraction, a setup for a fatal sucker punch.

No one seemed out of place. Nothing set off my now-elevated radar. Okay.

I looked at her again, still half-expecting that the second examination would tell me I’d been hallucinating. I hadn’t. It was her.

She was standing now, watching me. Her posture was stiff and somehow determined. Her eyes were fixed on me, but I couldn’t read them.

I glanced around the room again, then slowly walked over to where she stood. I stopped in front of her. I thought the ba-boom, ba-boom in my chest might be loud enough for her to hear.

Get it together, I thought. But I didn’t know what to say.

“How did you find me?” is what came out.

Her expression was placid, almost empty. Her eyes were dark. They radiated their characteristic untouchable heat.

“I looked in a directory of people who are supposed to be dead,” she said.

If she’d been trying to fluster me, she’d done a nice job of it. I glanced around the room again.

“Are you afraid of something?” she asked mildly.

“All the time,” I said, settling my eyes on hers again.

“Afraid of me? Why would that be?”

A pause. I asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

“Why?”

“Don’t play dumb. I know you’re not.”

My heart rate was starting to slow. If she thought I was going to start spilling my guts in response to her vague replies, she was mistaken. I don’t play it that way, not even for her.

“You going to tell me how you found me?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

Another pause. I looked at her. “You want to get a drink?”

“Did you kill my father?”

My heart reversed course.

I looked at her for a long time. Then I said, “Yes,” very quietly.

I watched her. I didn’t avert my eyes.

She was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was low and husky.

“I didn’t think you would admit it. Or at least not so easily.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking how ridiculous it sounded.

She pressed her lips together and shook her head, as though to say You can’t be serious.

I looked around the lobby again. I didn’t spot anyone who was positioned to do me harm, but there were a lot of people coming and going and I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to move. If she had any accomplices, this would draw them out.

“Why don’t we go to the bar,” I said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

She nodded without looking at me.

What I had in mind was not the lobby-level Rendezvous Bar, which is so heavily trafficked as to be useless from a security standpoint, but the mezzanine-level Old Imperial Bar. The latter is a relic from the original Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Imperial that was torn down in 1968, ostensibly in the name of earthquake safety, more likely in obeisance to misguided notions of “progress.” A walk to the mezzanine level would mean moving back across the lobby, taking a flight of stairs, and making several turns around mostly deserted corridors with various points of egress. If Midori had anyone following her, either with her knowledge or without, they’d have a hard time remaining unexposed while we moved.

We took the stairs to the mezzanine level. With the exception of the dozen or so patrons seated in the restaurants we passed, there was no one about. I checked behind us while we waited at the bar entrance to be seated. No one approached. It seemed she was alone.

We sat next to each other in one of the high, semicircular booths, hidden from the entrance. Anyone hoping to confirm our presence now would have to come inside and reveal himself. I ordered us a couple of eighteen-year-old Bunnahabhains from the bar’s excellent single malt menu.

The feeling was a bit odd under the circumstances, but I was glad to be back at the Old Imperial. Windowless and low-ceilinged, dark and subdued, intimate despite its spaciousness, the bar has an air of history, of gravitas, perhaps a consequence of being the sole surviving feature of the hotel’s martyred progenitor. Like the hotel itself, the Old Imperial feels a bit past its prime, but retains a dignified beauty and mysterious allure, like a grande dame who has seen much of life, known many lovers, and kept many secrets, who does not dwell on the glory of her more exuberant youth but who has neither forgotten it.

We sat in silence until the drinks arrived. Then she said, “Why?”

I picked up my Bunnahabhain. “You know why. I was hired.”

“By whom?”

“By the people your father took that disk from. The same people who thought you had it, who were trying to kill you.”

“Yamaoto?”

“Yes.”

She looked at me. “You’re an assassin, aren’t you? When there are rumors that the government has someone on the payroll, they’re talking about you, right?”

I let out a long exhalation. “Something like that.”

There was a pause. Then she asked, “How many people have you killed?”

My eyes moved to my glass. “I don’t know.”

“I’m not talking about Vietnam. Since then.”

“I don’t know,” I said again.

“Don’t you think that’s too many?” The mildness of her voice made the question worse.

“I don’t… I have rules. No women. No children. No acts against nonprincipals.” The words echoed flatly in my ears like a moron’s mantra, talismanic sounds suddenly stripped of their animating magic.

She laughed without mirth. “ ‘I have rules.’ You sound like a whore who wants credit for virtue because she won’t kiss the clients she fucks.”

It stung. But I took it.

“And then your friend from the Metropolitan Police Force told me you were dead. And you let me believe it. Do you know I grieved for you? Do you know what that’s like?”

I grieved for you, too, I wanted to say.

“Why?” she asked. “Why would you put me through that? Even beyond what you did to my father, why would you put me through that?”

I looked away.

“Tell me, goddamn it,” I heard her say.

I gripped my glass. “I wanted to spare you. From this… knowledge.”

“I don’t believe you. I half knew anyway. What did you think I would think when the evidence of corruption on that disk, which my father died trying to get published, wasn’t? When I tried to find out what had been done with your remains so I could offer my respects, but couldn’t?”

“I didn’t know it wouldn’t be published,” I said, not looking at her. “In fact I thought it would be. But regardless, I expected you to forget about me. At times I had my doubts, but what could I do at that point? Just show up in your life and explain? What if I’d been wrong, what if you had forgotten, you didn’t suspect, you’d gotten on with your life the way I’d hoped?” I looked at her. “I would have just caused you more pain.”

She shook her head. “You couldn’t have caused me more pain if you’d tried.”

There was a long silence. I said, “Are you going to tell me how you found me?”

She shrugged. “Your friend from the Metropolitan Police Force.”

I was taken aback. “Tatsu contacted you?”

“I contacted him. Several times, in fact. He kept blowing me off. Last week I came back to Tokyo and went to his office. I told a receptionist that if Ishikura-san didn’t see me I would contact the press, I would do everything I could do to make a public scandal. And I would have, you know. I wasn’t going to give up.”

She’d been brave, almost a little reckless. Tatsu wouldn’t have harmed her, even in response to a threat, but she had no way of knowing that. Another indication of just how desperately angry she had been.

“He saw you?” I asked.

“Not right away. He called me this afternoon.”

This afternoon. Right after I’d refused him, then.

“And he told you that you could find me here?”

She nodded.

How had he managed to track me down again? Probably those damn cameras. You can see some of them. Not all, I remembered him saying. Sure, use the camera to get a general fix on my location, then send men to the likely hotels in the area, if necessary, with the same photo they had fed to the cameras and the facial recognition software, to narrow things down.

I’d been a fool to stay in Tokyo, although with the kind of warning I had to give Harry, an overseas phone call would have been less than optimal.

What was that wily bastard up to, though? “Any thoughts on why Tatsu would agree to see you after a year of stonewalling?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Probably my threat.”

I doubted it. Tatsu didn’t know her as well as I did. He would have mistakenly assumed she was bluffing.

“You really think that was all there was to it?” I asked.

“Maybe. Maybe he had some ulterior reason for wanting us to meet. But what was I going to do, spite him by refusing to see you?”

“I suppose not.” And Tatsu would have supposed it, too. I felt a momentary wave of annoyance, bordering on hostility, toward Tatsu and his ongoing machinations.

She sighed. “He said that telling me you were dead was his doing, not yours.”

This was supposed to get back to me. Did he think I was going to take out Murakami in gratitude, as a quid pro quo?

“What else did he tell you?” I asked.

“That you helped him get the disk expecting him to turn it over to the media for publication.”

“Did he tell you why he didn’t?”

She nodded. “Because its information was so explosive that it might have brought down the Liberal Democrats and paved the way for Yamaoto’s ascension.”

“Sounds like you’re pretty up-to-date, then.”

“I’m a long way from up-to-date.”

“What about Harry?” I asked after a moment. “Why didn’t you go to him?”

She looked away and said, “I did. I wrote him a letter. He said he’d heard you were dead, and didn’t know any more than that.”

The way she had looked away… there was something she wasn’t telling me.

“You believed him?”

“Should I not have?”

Good recovery. But there was something more there, I thought.

“Remember the last time I saw you?” she asked.

It had been here, at the Imperial Hotel. We’d spent the night together. The next morning I had left to intercept Holtzer’s limousine. I had spent a few days in police custody after that. Meanwhile, Tatsu had told Midori I was dead and had deep-sixed the disk. Game over.

“I remember,” I said.

“You said, ‘I’ll be back sometime in the evening. Will you wait for me?’ Well, I waited for two days before I heard from your friend Ishikura-san. I had no one to contact, no way to know.”

I saw her eyes move to the ceiling for a moment, maybe looking away from memories she didn’t want to see. Maybe willing back tears.

“I couldn’t believe you were gone,” she went on. “Then I started to wonder if you really were gone. And if you weren’t gone, what would that mean? And then I doubted myself. I doubted myself. I thought, ‘He can’t still be alive, he wouldn’t have done this to you.’ But I couldn’t get rid of the suspicions. I didn’t know whether to grieve for you, or to want to kill you.”

She turned and looked at me. “Do you understand what you put me through?” she asked, her voice dropping into a whisper. “You… you fucking tortured me!”

In my peripheral vision I saw her quickly flick her thumb across one cheek, then the other. I looked down into my glass. The last thing she would want would be for me to witness her tears.

After a moment I turned to her. “Midori,” I said. My voice was low and sounded strange to me. “I’m sorrier for all this than I can say. If I could change any of it, I would.”

We were silent for a moment. I thought of Rio and said, “For what it’s worth, I’ve been trying to get out.”

She looked at me. “How hard are you trying? Most people get along pretty well without killing someone. They don’t have to go out of their way to avoid it.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that with me.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “Right now the people who know me seem to be equally divided between wanting to kill me and wanting me to kill.”

“Ishikura-san?”

I nodded. “Tatsu has devoted his life to fighting corruption in Japan. He’s got assets, but the forces he’s up against are stronger than he is. He’s trying to even the odds.”

“It’s hard for me to picture him as one of the good guys.”

“I’m sure it is. But the world he inhabits isn’t as black and white as the one you do. Believe it or not, he was trying to help your father.”

And suddenly I understood why he had sent her here. Not because he hoped that I would assist him as a quid pro quo for a few exculpatory comments he’d made to Midori. Or at least not entirely that. No, his real hope was that, if Midori came to view Tatsu as in some way trying to continue the fight her father had begun, she might want me to help him. He hoped that my seeing her would tap into my regrets about her father, make me malleable to a request that I do what he wanted.

“So now you’re ‘trying to get out,” ’ she said.

I nodded, thinking this would be what she wanted to hear.

But she laughed. “Is that your atonement after all you’ve done? I didn’t know it was that easy to get into heaven.”

Maybe I didn’t have a right, but I was starting to get irritated. “Look, I made a mistake with your father. I told you I’m sorry for it, I told you I would change it if I could. What else can I do? You want me to pour gasoline on myself and light a match? Feed the hungry? What?”

She dropped her eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t know, either. But I’m trying.”

That fucking Tatsu, I thought. He’d seen all of this. He knew she would rattle me.

I finished my Bunnahabhain. I set the empty glass down on the table and looked at it.

“I want something from you,” I heard her say after a moment.

“I know,” I answered, not looking at her.

“I don’t know what it is.”

I closed my eyes. “I know you don’t.”

“I can’t believe I’m even sitting here talking to you.”

To that I only nodded.

There was another long silence while I ran through my mind all the things I wished I could say to her, things I wished could make a difference.

“We’re not through,” I heard her say.

I looked at her, not knowing what she meant, and she went on.

“When I know what I want from you, I’m going to tell you.”

“I appreciate it,” I said dryly. “That way I’ll at least see it coming.”

She didn’t laugh. “You’re the killer, not me.”

“Right.”

She looked at me for a moment longer, then said, “I can find you here?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Where, then?”

“It’s better if I find you.”

“No!” she said with a sudden vehemence that surprised me. “No more of that bullshit. If you want to see me again, tell me where you’ll be.”

I picked up my empty glass and gripped it tightly.

Walk away, I told myself. You don’t even need to say anything. Just put a few bills on the table and go. You’ll never see her again.

Except I’d always be seeing her. I couldn’t get away from it.

I’ve gotten used to hoping for so little that I seem to have lost any natural immunity to the emotion’s infection. My hopes for Midori had gotten a foothold, and as ridiculous as they’d become, I couldn’t seem to beat them back.

“Look,” I said, already knowing it was futile. “I’ve lived this way for a long time. This is the reason I’ve lived for a long time.”

“Forget it, then,” she said. She stood up.

“All right,” I said. “You can find me here.”

She looked at me and nodded. “Okay.”

I paused. “Am I going to hear from you?” I asked.

“Do you care?”

“I’m afraid I do.”

“Good,” she said, nodding. “Let’s see how you like the uncertainty.”

She turned and walked away.

I paid the bill and waited for a minute, then left, using one of the basement exits.

I couldn’t stay there any longer. I might be able to live with Midori herself knowing my whereabouts, but she had no security consciousness and I couldn’t live with the possibility that she might inadvertently lead someone to me. I wanted to make things harder for Tatsu, too. It might not have mattered all that much at this point if he had a way to find me, but I didn’t like the notion.

I would stay at the most anonymous business hotels, a different one every night. Doing so would protect me from anyone who might be following Midori and would keep Tatsu scrambling to try to keep up.

I’d keep the room at the Imperial, of course. That might help throw Tatsu off. Also, I’d be able to check the room voice mail remotely, in case Midori tried to reach me there. I could stop in from time to time, using extra care, just to maintain appearances.

I kept my head low and did everything I could to try to avoid presenting a pretty picture for the cameras, but there was no way to be sure. I felt boxed in, claustrophobic.

Maybe I would just bolt. First thing in the morning, Osaka, Rio, finito.

But I hated the thought that Midori might try to contact me again, only to find, again, that I was gone.

You’re already lying to her, I thought. Took you all of a half-hour.

Then maybe I would stay for another day, two at the most. Yeah, maybe. And after that, the next time Midori or Tatsu or anyone else heard from me it would be via postcard, par avion.

I made some aggressive moves to ensure that I wasn’t being followed. Then I slowed down and drifted through night Tokyo, not knowing where I was going, not caring.

I saw two young furita-“freeters”-slackers who had responded to Japan’s decade-long recession by eschewing positions that were no longer available to them anyway, dropping instead into odd jobs like the late shift in convenience stores, where they would service the needs of other Tokyo night denizens: hollow-eyed parents in search of cleaning supplies for the household chores their long commutes and crying babies left no time to accomplish during daylight hours; lonely men still dressed in the interchangeable shirtsleeves of their day jobs, suffering in the midst of the vast city from solitude so acute that not even the narcotic of late-night television talk shows could distract them from occasional nocturnal forays in search of signs of other life; even other furita, on their way back to their parents’ houses, which, to make their meager ends meet, they still inhabited, who might share a tired cigarette and an unfunny joke before sleeping off the morning, then rising to do it all over again later that day.

I passed sanitation workers, construction crews laboring under halogen lamps on the potholes of night-quiet streets, insomniac truck drivers silently unloading their wares onto deserted sidewalks and silent stoops.

I found myself near Nogizaka station, and realized that I had been unconsciously moving northwest. I stopped. Aoyama Bochi was just across from me, silent and brooding, drawing me like a gaping black hole whose gravity was even greater than that of surrounding Tokyo.

Without thinking, I cut across the road, hopping over the metal divider at its center. I paused at the stone steps before me, then surrendered and walked up to the graves within.

Immediately the sounds of the street below grew detached, distant, the meaningless echoes of urban voices whose urgent notes reached but held no sway over the parklike necropolis within. From where I stood, the cemetery seemed to have no end. It stretched out before me, a city in its own right, its myriad markers windowless tenements in miniature, laid out in still symmetry, long boulevards of the dead.

I moved deeper into the comforting gloom, along a stone walkway covered in cherry blossoms that lay like tenebrous snow in the glow of lamplights to either side. Just days earlier, these same blossoms had been celebrated by living Tokyoites, who came here in their drunken thousands to see reflected in the blossom’s brief and vital beauty the inherent pathos of their own lives. But now the blossoms were fallen, the revelers departed, even the garbage disgorged by their parties efficiently removed and discarded, and the area was once again given over only to the dead.

I thought of how Midori had once articulated the idea of mono no aware, a sensibility that, although frequently obscured during cherry blossom viewing by the cacophony of drunken doggerel and generator-powered television sets, remains steadfast in one of the two cultures from which I come. She had called it “the sadness of being human.” A wise, accepting sadness, she had said. I admired her for the depths of character such a description indicated. For me, sad has always been a synonym for bitter, and I suspect this will always be so.

I walked on, my footfalls melancholy, respectful of the thick silence around me. Unlike the surrounding city, Aoyama Bochi is changeless, and I had no difficulty finding what drew me despite the decades that had passed since I had last come here.

The marker was stark and simple, distinguished only by a brief declaration that Fujiwara Shuichi had lived from 1912 to 1960 and that all that remained of him was interred here. Fujiwara Shuichi, my father, killed in the street riots that rocked Tokyo one awful summer while I was a boy.

I stood before the grave and maintained a long bow, my palms pressed together before my face in the Buddhist attitude of respect for the dead. My mother would have wanted me to say a prayer, crossing myself at its conclusion, and had this been her grave, I would have done so. But such a western ritual would have been an insult to my father in his life, and why would I do something to offend him now?

I smiled. It was hard to avoid that kind of thinking. My father was dead.

Still, I offered no prayer.

I waited a moment, then lowered myself, cross-legged, to the earth. Some of the graves were adorned with flowers, in various stages of freshness and decay. As though the dead could smell the bouquets.

A breeze sighed among the markers. I put my forehead in my palms and stared at the ground before me.

People have rituals for communing with the dead, rituals that depend more on the idiosyncrasies of the individual than on the influence of culture. Some visit gravesites. Some talk to portraits, or mantelpiece urns. Some go to spots favored by the deceased during life, or mouth silent prayers in houses of worship, or have trees planted in memory in some far-off land.

The common denominator, of course, is a sense beyond logic that the dead are aware of all this, that they can hear the prayers and witness the deeds and feel the ongoing love and longing. People seem to find that sense comforting.

I don’t believe any of it. I’ve never seen a soul depart from a body. I’ve never been haunted by a ghost, angry or loving. I’ve never been rewarded or punished or touched by some traveler from the undiscovered country. I know as well as I know anything that the dead are simply dead.

I sat silently for several minutes, resisting the urge to speak, knowing it was stupid. There was nothing left of my father. Even if there were, it was ridiculous to believe that it would be here, hovering around ashes and dust, jostling for position among the souls of the hundreds of thousands of others buried in this place.

People lay the flowers and say the prayers, they believe these things, because doing so avoids the discomfort of acknowledging that the person you loved is gone. It’s easier to believe that maybe the person can still see and hear and care.

I looked at my father’s marker. It was young by the standards of the cemetery, just over four decades, but already it was darkened by pollution. Moss grew thin and insensate up its left side. Without thinking, I reached out and ran my fingers over the raised lettering of my father’s name.

“Hisashiburi, papa,” I whispered, addressing him like the young boy I had been when he had died. It’s been a long time, papa.

Forgive me father. It has been thirty years since my last confession.

Stop that shit.

“I’m sorry I don’t come to visit you more often,” I said in Japanese, my voice low. “Or even think of you. There are so many things I keep at a distance because they’re painful. Your memory is one of those things. The first of them, in fact.”

I paused for a moment and considered the silence around me. “But you’re not listening, anyway.”

I looked around. “This is stupid,” I said. “You’re dead. You’re not here.”

Then I dropped my head into my hands again. “I wish I could make her understand,” I said. “I wish you could help me.”

Damn, she’d been hard on me. Called me a whore.

Maybe it wasn’t unfair. After all, killing is the ultimate expression of hatred and fear, as sex is the ultimate expression of love and desire. And, as with sex, killing a stranger who has otherwise provoked no emotion is inherently unnatural. I suppose you could say that a man who kills a stranger is not unlike a woman who has sex under analogous circumstances. That a man who is paid to kill is like a woman who is paid to fuck. Certainly the man is subject to the same reluctance, the same numbing, the same regrets. The same damage to the soul.

“But goddamn it,” I mused aloud, “is it moral to kill someone you don’t even know, a grunt probably just like yourself, just because the government says you can? Or you drop a bomb from thirty thousand feet to kill the bad guys, you bury women and children under the rubble of their own homes in the process, but you’re not bothered because you didn’t actually have to see the damage, that’s moral? I don’t hide behind mortar range, or behind the cartoon image in the thermal scope of a sniper’s rifle, or behind the medals they give you afterward to reassure you that the slaughter was just. All that shit is an illusion, a soporific fed to killers to anesthetize them after they’ve killed. What I do is no worse than what goes on all over the world, what has always gone on. The difference is that I’m honest about it.”

I was quiet for a while, thinking.

“And how about a little slack?” I said. “Her old man was set to check out from lung cancer anyway, in a lot more pain than what I caused him. Whatever happened to ‘no harm, no foul’? I mean, I practically did him a favor. Hell, in some cultures what I did wouldn’t be looked at as much more than euthanasia. She almost ought to thank me for it.”

Things had been okay for me in Osaka, reasonably okay. Looking back, I felt like it had all been falling apart since Tatsu had showed up.

I thought about taking him out. There were a dozen reasons why I didn’t want to. The problem was, he was beginning to act like he knew I didn’t want to, and that wasn’t good.

I needed to get back to Osaka, finish my preparations as quickly as I could, and go. Tatsu could handle himself. Harry was hopeless. Midori knew what she’d come here to learn. Naomi was sweet, but she’d served her purpose.

I stood. My legs had stiffened on the cool ground and I massaged some blood back into them. I bowed to my father’s grave, then stood looking at it for a long time.

“Jaa,” I said finally. Then: “Arigatou.”

I turned and walked out.

15

THE NEXT MORNING, I went out to a pay phone and called Harry. He’d done a lot for me over the years and I felt bad about the way we’d parted. I knew he’d be bothered by it, and that bothered me.

An unfamiliar male voice answered his phone. “Moshi moshi?”

“Moshi moshi,” I said, my brow furrowing. “Haruyoshi-san irasshaimasu ka?” Is Haruyoshi there?

There was a pause. “Are you a friend of Haruyoshi’s?” the voice asked me in Japanese.

“I am. Is everything all right?”

“This is Haruyoshi’s uncle. I regret to inform you that he passed away last night.”

I gripped the phone tightly and closed my eyes. I thought of the last thing he’d said to me: Look, I’m going to see her tonight. I’ll watch more closely. I’ll keep in mind what you’ve said.

He’d gone to see her, all right. But he hadn’t kept anything in mind.

“Forgive me for asking,” I said, my eyes still closed, “but can you tell me how Haruyoshi passed away?”

There was another pause. “It seems that Haruyoshi had drunk a bit too much, and had gone up to the roof of his building for a walk. Apparently he came too close to the edge and lost his balance.”

I gripped the phone harder. I’d never known Harry to drink. Certainly not excessively. Although I knew he might try all sorts of new things if Yukiko were there to urge him on.

“Thank you for informing me,” I said to the voice. “Please accept my deepest condolences on this sad occasion. Please convey these sentiments to Harry’s parents. I will say a prayer for his spirit.”

“Thank you,” the voice said.

I put the phone back in its cradle.

My gut told me that what I’d just heard had been legitimate. Still, I called the police box in his neighborhood to make sure. I told the cop who answered that I was a friend of Haruyoshi Fukasawa, that I’d heard there had been bad news. The cop confirmed that Harry was dead. A fall. Apparently an accident. He told me he was sorry. I thanked him and hung up.

I stood there for a moment, feeling miserable and strangely alone.

They’d gotten what they wanted from him. They were tying up loose ends.

Well, there was nothing I could do for him now. I’d tried to help him when it mattered. Now it was too late.

In some ways it was my fault. I’d known Yukiko was dangerous to him, but all I did was tell him about my suspicions. What I should have done was said nothing to him, and just made her have a little accident. Harry would have grieved, but he’d still be alive.

I realized I was grinding my teeth and made myself stop.

I thought of how happy he’d been when he’d first told me about her, how shy and sappy and obviously in love.

I remembered the way the ice bitch had alternately teased, then soothed, Murakami. How Naomi had said, She’s comfortable doing things I’m not.

I imagined her pumping him with drinks, his body unaccustomed to the alcohol. I imagined him doing it to please her. I imagined her suggesting a walk on the roof, Murakami waiting there.

Or maybe she did it herself. It wouldn’t be hard. She’d spent time in the building, she knew its rhythms, its routines, the layout of its security cameras. And he trusted her. Even with what I’d told him, if he were drunk enough, he wouldn’t have hesitated to walk to the edge. Maybe for a laugh. Maybe on a dare.

Without thinking, I snatched the receiver from its cradle and raised it overhead to smash down onto the phone. I stood there for a long moment, my arm cocked, my body trembling, willing myself not to make a scene, not to draw attention.

Finally, I set the receiver back in its cradle. I closed my eyes and breathed in, then let it all the way out. Once more. And again.

I went to a different phone and called Tatsu. I told him to check our bulletin board because I wanted to see him. Then I went to an Internet café to tell him when and where.

We met at Café Peshaworl, a coffeehouse and bar in the Nihonbashi business district, and another place I had liked during the years I was in Tokyo.

I got there early, as usual, and took the steps down from Sakura-dori to the subdued interior below. Peshaworl is shaped like an I-beam, and I took a seat in the corner of one of the short ends of the I. I was hidden from the entrance, but I could just see the bar, with its red steel scale for measuring precise quantities of beans; its battered pots for steeping coffee, their dents, like those in fine single malt stills, probably credited with producing the unique taste of Peshaworl’s brews; and its curious implements, intimidating in their specificity, no doubt designed exclusively for the concoction of the most exalted blends, their correct use unknown except to craft initiates.

I ordered the house Roa blend and listened to Monica Borrfors singing “August Wishing” while I waited for Tatsu to show. At just after twelve, I heard the door open and close, followed by Tatsu’s familiar shuffling gait. A moment later he poked his head around the corner and saw me. He came over and sat so that we were at ninety degrees to each other and could converse with maximum privacy. He grunted a greeting, then said, “Based on your recent meeting with Kawamura-san, I can only assume that you brought me here either to thank me or to kill me.”

“I’m not here about that,” I replied.

He looked at me for a moment, silent.

The waitress came over and asked him what he would like. He ordered a milk tea, more, I thought, as a concession to his surroundings than out of any real desire.

While we waited for his tea, he said, “I hope you understand why I did what I did.”

“Sure. You’re a manipulative, fanatical bastard who believes the end always justifies the means.”

“Now you sound like my wife.”

I didn’t laugh. “You shouldn’t have dragged Midori back into this.”

“I didn’t. I had hoped that she would want to believe you were dead. If she had wanted to believe, she would have. If she did not want to believe, she would investigate. She is quite tenacious.”

“She told me she threatened you with a scandal.”

“Probably a bluff.”

“She doesn’t bluff, Tatsu.”

“Regardless. I told her where to find you because it was no longer useful to try to deceive her. In fact, she was not deceived. Also, I thought you might benefit from that encounter.”

I shook my head. “Did you really think she could convince me to help you?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Don’t lead me, Tatsu.”

“All right. Consciously or unconsciously, you want to be worthy of her. I respect you for that sentiment because there is much about Kawamura-san to admire. But you may be going about it in the wrong way, and I wanted to give you the opportunity to see that.”

“You’re wrong,” I said.

“Then why are you here?”

I looked at him. “I’m going to help you on this. It has nothing to do with Midori.” I pictured Harry for a second, then said, “No, you’re going to help me.”

The waitress set down his tea and moved on.

“What happened?” he asked.

My reflex was to not tell him, to protect Harry, like I’d always tried to do before. But it didn’t matter anymore.

“Murakami killed a friend of mine,” I said. “A kid named Haruyoshi. Yamaoto was using him, I think to find me. When they thought they’d gotten what they wanted, they got rid of him.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I shrugged. “It works out well for you. If I didn’t know you as well as I do, I might have been suspicious.”

I regretted saying it as soon as it was out. Tatsu had too much dignity to respond.

“Anyway, I want you to look into something for me,” I said.

“All right.”

I told him about how Kanezaki had been following Harry, how Midori’s letter had been the start of it, how Yukiko and Damask Rose were involved.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Your friend was… young?” he asked.

I looked at him. “Young enough.”

He nodded, his eyes sad.

I thought of how he had first briefed me on Murakami, how his jaw had clenched and unclenched when he told me that he believed Murakami had been involved in the murder of a child. I had to ask. “Tatsu, was there… did you have a son?”

There was a long silence, during which he must have been digesting the realization that I knew something of his personal life, and deciding on how he wanted to respond.

“Yes,” he said after a while, nodding. “He would have turned thirty-two this past February.”

He seemed to be carefully weighing, even carefully pronouncing, the words. I wondered when he had last spoken of this.

“He was eight months old, just weaned,” he went on. “My wife and I had not been out together in some time, and we hired a baby-sitter. When we came home, the sitter was distraught. She had dropped the little boy and he had a bruise on his head. He had cried, she told us, but now he seemed all right. He was sleeping.

“My wife wanted to take him to the doctor right away, but we checked on him and he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. ‘Why trouble the little one’s sleep unnecessarily?’ I said. ‘If there were a problem, we would know it by now.’ My wife wanted to believe everything was all right, and so I was able to persuade her.”

He took a sip of tea. “In the morning the baby was dead. The doctor told us it was a subdural hematoma. He told us that it would have made no difference if we had sought immediate medical attention. But of course I will always wonder. Because I had a choice, you see? It may be terrible for me to say it, but it would have been easier if my son had died instantly. Or if the sitter had been less decent, and had mentioned nothing to us. The same outcome, and yet completely different.”

I looked at him. “How old were your girls, Tatsu?” I asked.

“Two and four.”

“Christ,” I muttered.

He nodded, not bothering to make a show of stoicism by arguing with me. “Losing a child is the worst thing,” he said. “There is no greater grief. For a long time I wanted to take my own life. Partly on the chance that by doing so I might be reunited with my son, that I might be able to comfort him and protect him. Partly to atone for how I had wronged him. And partly simply to end my pain. But my duty to my wife and daughters was greater than these irrational and selfish impulses. And I came to view my pain as a just punishment, as my karma. But still, every day I think of my little son. Every day I wonder if I will have a chance to see him again.”

We were silent for a moment. From behind the counter came the sound of beans being ground.

“We’re going to take this guy out,” I told him. “I can’t do it alone, and neither can you, but maybe we can do it together.”

“Tell me what you propose.”

“Murakami shows up at the dojo from time to time, but you can’t stake the place out. It’s on a quiet street with minimal automobile or pedestrian traffic, so not much cover. Plus I spotted at least two sentries on my way in.”

He nodded. “I know. I had a man make a casual pass.”

“I figured you would. But we might not need a stakeout. If I show up, someone is likely to call Murakami. That’s when we nail him.”

He looked at me. “If Murakami killed your friend because they decided they didn’t need him anymore to get to you, they probably know who you are.”

“Exactly. That’s why I know that, when I show up, someone will call him. And even if I’m wrong, and they don’t know who I am, Murakami said he wanted to talk to me at the dojo. Sooner or later he’ll show up there. And when he shows up, I’ll call you. You come with picked men, arrest him, and take him into custody.”

“He might attempt to resist arrest,” he said dryly.

“Oh yeah. A guy like that might resist fiercely. I’m sure lethal force would be justified in subduing him.”

“Indeed.”

“In fact, it’s even possible that, after you have him handcuffed, someone who might be described afterward as ‘one of his cohorts who got away’ might appear and break his neck.”

He nodded. “I can see where something like that could occur.”

“I’ll go for two hours at a time,” I said. “During those two-hour periods you have men mobile and nearby, ready to pounce on my signal.”

He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I hesitate to suggest it, but it’s possible that Murakami will not show. He may simply subcontract the work to someone else. In which case you would be walking into extreme danger for nothing.”

“He’ll show,” I said. “I know this guy. If he knows who I am, he’s going to want a piece of me. And I’m going to give it to him.”

16

THAT NIGHT I stayed at a small business hotel in Nishi-Nippori. It was spare enough to make me miss the New Otani and the Imperial, but it was a quiet place in a lonely part of the city and I felt reasonably safe there for the night.

The next morning, I worked out at Murakami’s dojo in Asakusa. When I arrived, the men who were already training paused and gave me a low collective bow-a sign of their respect for the way I had dispatched Adonis. After that, I was treated in a dozen subtle ways with deference that bordered on awe. Even Washio, older than I and with a much longer and deeper association with the dojo, was using different verb forms to indicate that he now considered me his superior. My sense was that, whatever Yamaoto and Murakami might have discovered about me, the knowledge had not been shared with the lower echelon.

Tatsu had given me a Glock 26, the shortest-barreled pistol in Glock’s excellent 9-millimeter line. Definitely not standard Keisatsucho issue. I didn’t know how Tatsu had acquired it in tightly gun-controlled Japan, and I didn’t ask. Despite its relatively low profile, I couldn’t keep it concealed on my person while I was working out. Instead I left it in my gym bag. I stayed close to the bag.

Tatsu had also given me a cell phone with which I would alert him when Murakami showed. I had created a speed dial entry so that all I had to do was hit one of the keys, let the call go through, and hang up. When Tatsu saw that a call had come from this number, he’d scramble his nearby men to the dojo.

But Murakami didn’t show. Not that day, not the next.

I was getting antsy. Too much living out of hotels, a different one every night. Too much worrying about security cameras. Too much thinking about Harry, about the useless way he’d died, about how hard I’d been on him that very night.

And too much thinking about Midori, wondering whether she’d get in touch again, and what she would want if she did.

I went to the dojo for a third day. I was doing long workouts, trying to give Murakami the widest possible window in which to appear, but there was still no sign of him. I was starting to think he just wasn’t going to show.

But he did. I was on the floor, stretching, when I heard the door buzzer. I looked up to see Murakami, wearing a black leather jacket and head-hugging shades, and his two bodyguards, similarly dressed, enter the room. As usual, the atmosphere in the dojo changed when he entered, his presence aggravating everyone’s vestigial fight-or-flight radar like a mild electric current.

“Oi, Arai-san, yo,” he said, walking over. “Let’s talk.”

I stood up. “Okay.”

One of the bodyguards approached. I started toward my bag, but he got there ahead of me. He picked it up and slid it over his shoulder. “I’ll take this,” he said.

I gave no sign that this was a problem for me. The cell phone, at least, much smaller than the gun, was in my pocket. I shrugged and said, “Thanks.”

Murakami motioned toward the door with a tilt of his head. “Outside.”

My heart rate had doubled but my voice was cool. “Sure,” I called to him. “Just going to take a leak first.”

I walked to the back of the room and into the bathroom. I was already so juiced from adrenaline that I couldn’t have pissed if I had to, but that wasn’t what I had come to do.

I was looking for a weapon of convenience. I would call Tatsu after I found it. Maybe some powdered soap that I could toss into someone’s eyes, or a mop handle that I could break off into a nightstick. Anything that would improve the currently ugly odds.

My eyes swept the room but there was nothing. The soap was liquid. If there was a mop, they kept it elsewhere.

You should have done this before it mattered. Stupid. Stupid.

One thing. There was a brass doorstop screwed into the wall just above the floor and behind the door. I knelt and tried to turn it. It was too close to the floor for me to get a hand around. And it was coated in probably ten layers of paint and looked as old as the building. It wouldn’t budge.

“Fuck,” I breathed. I could have tried stomping on it with my heel, but that might have broken off the point that was screwed into the wall.

Instead I tried pressing one way with my palm, then the other. Up, down. Left, right. I jiggled it but felt no new play. Damn it, this is taking too long.

I squeezed it between the thumbs and forefingers of both hands as hard as I could and rotated it counterclockwise. For a second I thought my fingers had slipped, but then I realized that it had turned.

I unscrewed it the rest of the way and stood just as the bathroom door opened. It was one of the bodyguards.

He looked at me. “Everything okay?” he asked, holding the door open.

I palmed the doorstop. “Just washing my hands. Be right with you.”

He nodded and left. The door closed behind him and I shoved the doorstop into my right front pocket.

Of course, I didn’t know for certain that they were on to me. Murakami might have just been there to talk about whatever it was he had in mind at Damask Rose. But that didn’t matter. The important thing is to accept the facts early. Most people don’t want to believe the crime or the ambush or whatever the violence is going to be is really going to happen. At some level they know better, but they keep themselves in denial until the proof really comes in. At which point, of course, it’s too late to do anything about it.

If I have to err, it’s on the side of assuming the worst. This way, if I’m wrong, I can always apologize. Or send flowers. You err on the other side, the flowers will be coming to you.

I pulled out the cell phone and pressed the speed dial key as I walked out. The first thing I noticed was that the gym was empty. It was just Murakami and his two goons, standing between me and the door. They’d set my bag down near the front entrance. I didn’t see the gun, so it seemed that they hadn’t thought to open the bag during my brief absence.

“What’s going on?” I asked, but casually, as though I was too stupid to realize anything was seriously amiss and was counting on Murakami for a straight answer.

“Everything’s fine,” he said, and they began to move toward me. “We just asked the others to wait outside so we could have some privacy.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. I held up the cell phone. “Just got to make a quick phone call.”

“Later,” he said.

I hoped Tatsu and his men were close by. They’d have to be right around the corner if they were going to be of any use to me.

“You sure?” I asked, looking at him, giving the call time to go through. “It’ll only take a minute.”

“Later,” he said again. The bodyguards had fanned out to his flanks.

I glanced down and saw that the call had connected. “Okay,” I said with a shrug. I put my hands in my pockets-putting the phone away with my left, palming the doorstop with my right. I would wait until they were in striking distance.

But they stopped just outside that range. I watched them with a quizzical, sheepish look, as if to say, Hey, guys, what’s all this about?

Murakami eyeballed me for a long moment. When he spoke his voice was a low growl. “We’ve got a problem,” he said.

“A problem?”

“Yeah. A problem as in, your name isn’t Arai. It’s Rain.”

I let my eyes move fearfully from face to face, to the exit, then back again. I wanted them to think I might bolt. Which I sure as shit would if I could.

“Hold him,” Murakami said.

The man to my left lunged. I was ready for it. My hands had already popped free of my pockets and I extended my left arm as though to block him. He took the bait, grabbing my forearm with both hands to immobilize it while his partner moved in from the right. I snaked the hand he was trying to hold over his left wrist, trapping it, and used the grip to yank myself toward him. He was braced for me to try to pull in the opposite direction and couldn’t react in time to stop me from closing the distance. The doorstop was already out, palmed in my fist with the screw point jutting out between my middle and forefinger like the world’s nastiest signet ring.

I popped a quick jab over his trapped left arm and up into his neck, aiming for just under the jaw line. It wasn’t a power shot but it didn’t need to be; what it needed was accuracy, and that it had. The tip plunged in like a corkscrew hypodermic, and before he could pull away I twisted downward and ripped back. He yelped and leaped away, instinctively clapping his hand over the resultant tear. Blood jetted out from between his fingers, and I knew I’d hit the carotid.

He made a horrified gurgling noise and clapped his other hand over the spot, but blood continued to pour out. I swung back to my right. His friend had pulled up short, unsure of what had just happened, shocked by all the blood. I slipped the doorstop between my thumb and forefinger as though it was a knife and brandished it at him Hollywood style, my arm extended and the weapon way too far from my body.

When he realized that I wasn’t holding a machete, he tried to grab my juicy target of an arm. I let him get my wrist, then made as though I was trying to yank free. He braced against the pressure, straightening his forward knee, his eyes and all his focus on the weapon. Using our counterbalanced pulling to brace myself, I raised my right foot off the floor and shot it into his forward knee. At the last instant he saw it coming and tried to twist away, but he had too much weight on the leg. The kick blew through his knee and he crumbled to the floor with a shriek.

Murakami was still standing between me and the door. He looked calmly at the two fallen men, one screaming and writhing on his back, the other sitting and clutching his hands tightly to his spurting neck in a gesture of burlesque mortification. Then he looked back at me. He smiled, revealing the bridge.

“You’re good,” he said. “You don’t look like much, but you’re good.”

“Your friend needs a doctor,” I said, breathing hard. “If he doesn’t get proper attention he’s going to bleed out inside five minutes, maybe less.”

He shrugged. “You think I want him as a bodyguard after this? If he wasn’t going to die, I’d kill him myself.”

The fallen man was drenched with blood and staring at Murakami blankly. His mouth opened and closed but no sound emerged. After a moment he slumped soundlessly to his side.

Murakami looked down at him, then back to me. He shrugged again.

“Looks like you saved me the trouble,” he said.

C’mon, Tatsu, where the fuck are you?

He unzipped his jacket and took a respectful step backward before shrugging it off. If he’d stayed just a little closer I would have moved on him as soon as it was down around his elbows, and he knew it.

He looked at the doorstop, my hand bloody around it. “We’re going to do this armed?” he asked, his tone dead-man flat. “Okay.”

He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a folded knife. He flicked a thumb stud on the handle and the blade snapped out and into position. From the instant, semiauto opening, I knew it was a Kershaw model, essentially a quality, street-legal switchblade. The cutting edge was black, coated with titanium nitride, about nine centimeters. Shit.

In my unpleasant experience, unarmed against a knife, you’ve basically got four options. Your best bet is to run like hell, if you can. Next best is to do something immediately that prevents the attack from getting started. Third is to create distance so you can deploy a longer-range weapon. Fourth is to go beserk and hope not to get fatally cut going through and over your attacker.

I don’t care how much training you’ve had, these are your only realistic options, and none of them is particularly good except maybe the first. Unarmed techniques against the knife are a fantasy. The only people who teach them have never faced a determined attacker with a live blade.

My macho years are at least two decades behind me, and I would have been thrilled to turn and run if I could have. But in the enclosed space of the dojo, with a younger, and probably faster, enemy standing between me and the exit, running wasn’t really an option, and I realized that the ordinarily depressing odds of emerging unhurt against a knife looked downright desolate.

I glanced over at the bag. It was about ten meters away, and my chances of getting to it and accessing the gun before Murakami put that blade in me were not good.

He smiled, the bridge a predatory rictus. “Throw away yours, and I’ll throw away mine,” he said.

He really was deranged. I had no interest in fighting him, only in killing him now or running away to wait for a more opportune moment. But maybe I could play this out.

“You going to tell me what this is about?” I asked.

“Throw away yours, and I’ll throw away mine,” he said again.

So much for that. I knew there was a set of weights in back. I might be able to reach them before he got to me. If there were loose plates, I could use them like missiles, wear him down, create an opening that would give me time to deploy the gun. Not a happy prospect against a guy with the reflexes to fight dogs, but I was running out of ideas.

“You first,” I said.

“All right, armed,” he said, and started coming toward me. But slowly, taking his time.

I tensed to go for the weights.

A commanding series of knocks ran out from the front door, and I heard the words “Keisatsu da!” Police! bellowed through a bullhorn.

Murakami’s head swiveled in that direction, but his eyes didn’t leave me. I saw from the reflex that the knocking had startled him, that he wasn’t expecting anyone.

It came again, a fist banging on metal. Then “Keisatsu da! Akero!” Police! Open up!

Tatsu, I thought.

We looked at each other for a long second, but I already knew what he was going to do. He might have been crazy, but he was a survivor. A survivor reassesses odds continually and doesn’t disrespect them.

He gestured at me with the knife. “Another time,” he said. Then he bolted for the back.

I dashed to the gym bag. But by the time I reached it, he’d already made it inside the locker room and had slammed the door behind him. Following him in alone would be dangerous. Better to have Tatsu as backup.

I sprinted to the entranceway. The door was secured with horizontal, spring-loaded bars, and it took me a few seconds to figure out how to work the mechanism. There was a gear in the center that wouldn’t give. There, that latch-press that first. I pressed and turned, and the bars pulled in.

I shouldered the door open. Tatsu and another man were on the other side of it, both with their guns drawn. “Inside,” I said, gesturing with my head. “There’s a back door he might use. He’s got a knife.”

“I’ve already sent a man around back,” Tatsu said. He nodded to his partner and the two of them moved inside. I followed them in.

They noted the two men on the floor but could see that they weren’t going anywhere. We made our way to the back of the dojo. I saw Tatsu’s man move toward the bathroom. “Not there,” I said. “There. The locker room. There’s a back door inside, but he might still be in there.”

They took up positions on either side of the door, crouching to reduce their profile. Each held his gun close in and at waist level in the so-called third eye position, which demonstrated some tactical acumen. Tatsu nodded, and his man, who was on the knob side of the door, reached out and pushed the door inward while Tatsu sighted down the funnel. As the door swung in, Tatsu tracked it with his eyes and his weapon.

Another nod and they went in, Tatsu in the lead. The room was empty. The exterior door was closed, but its bolt was pulled back and the lock I had seen previously was gone.

“There,” I said. “He went through there.” I thought of Tatsu’s other man, the one who had gone around back. He and Murakami would have been on a collision course.

They took up their positions again and went through. I followed them. Behind the building was a tiny courtyard, choked with refuse containers, empty boxes, and abandoned construction materials. A rusting HVAC unit lay disconnected and inert to one side. Opposite, the carcass of a refrigerator leaned sideways against a corrugated wall, its door gone, two of its interior shelves hanging out like innards from a gutted animal.

The courtyard fed into an alley. In the alley we found Tatsu’s man.

He was on his back, his eyes open, one hand still clutching the gun that had been useless to him. Murakami had opened him up and left him. The ground around him was soaked in blood.

“Chikusho,” I heard Tatsu breathe. Fuck. He knelt to confirm that the man was dead, then pulled out his cell phone and spoke into it while his remaining man scanned the alley.

I noted the absence of defensive wounds on the corpse-no slash marks on the hands or wrists. He hadn’t even gotten his arms up to protect himself, let alone managed to fire his weapon. The poor bastard. The gun might have made him feel overconfident. A common error. In some conditions, and a narrow alley can be one of them, a blade will beat a bullet.

Tatsu stood up and looked at me. His tone was calm but I could see quiet rage in his eyes.

“Murakami?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Those men inside, they’re his?”

I nodded again.

“There is a large Mercedes parked in front of the building. I am guessing he arrived in it, and was planning to leave in it. Now he will be forced to rely on taxis or public transportation. He could not have done that”-he gestured to the downed man-“without getting a substantial amount of blood on him. We will have men here shortly to search the area. We may be able to track him.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

His nostrils flared. “One of the two men I saw inside looked well enough to interrogate,” he said. “That will also be useful.”

“Was there anyone out front when you arrived?” I asked. “Murakami cleared the place out just before you got here.”

“There were several men outside,” he said. “They scattered when they saw us. They won’t be of immediate use.”

“I’m sorry about your man,” I told him, not knowing what else to say.

He nodded slowly, and for a moment his features seemed to sag. “His name was Fujimori. He was a good man, capable and idealistic. Later today I will have to tell these things to his widow.”

He straightened, as though collecting himself. “Brief me now on what happened, then go, before the other officers arrive.”

I told him. He listened without a word. When I was done, he looked at me and said, “Meet me at Christie tea shop in Harajuku tonight at seven o’clock. Don’t disappear. Don’t make me have to find you.”

I knew Christie, having been there many times while living in Tokyo. “I’ll be there,” I said.

“Where is the gun?”

“Inside. In a gym bag, by the front entrance. I’d like to keep it.”

He shook his head. “I was asked about it today. I need to account for it or there will be trouble. I may be able to get you another.”

“Do that,” I said, thinking of the confident way Murakami had unsheathed his Kershaw.

He nodded, then looked at his fallen comrade. His jaw clenched, then released. “When I catch him,” he said, “that’s what I am going to do to him.”

17

I WALKED OUT to Kototoi-dori and found a cab. Although their functioning was temporarily disrupted by what had just gone down at the dojo, I knew now that Murakami’s people were aware I was in Asakusa, and the subway station would have been too likely a spot for an ambush.

The meeting Tatsu had demanded was over six hours away, and the bizarre, floating feeling of having nowhere to go and nothing to do was getting to me. I felt a rush of what someone ought to name post-traumatic-extreme-horniness disorder, and thought about calling Naomi. She’d be home right now, maybe just waking up. But with Murakami on to me, I didn’t want to go anywhere where there was even a small chance that I might be anticipated.

My pager buzzed. I checked it, saw a number I didn’t recognize.

I dialed the number from a pay phone. The other party picked up on the first ring.

“Can you tell who this is?” a male voice asked in English.

I recognized the voice. Kanezaki, my latest friend from the CIA.

“Please, just listen to what I have to say,” he went on. “Don’t hang up.”

“How did you get this number?” I asked.

“Phone records-calls made from pay phones near your friend’s apartment. But I had nothing to do with what happened to him. I just found out about it. That’s why I’m calling you.”

I thought about that. If Kanezaki had a way of accessing a record of calls made from those pay phones, he might have managed to zero in on my pager number. Harry’s practice had been to use various local pay phones to page me, after which he would return to his apartment and wait for my call. With access to the records, you might spot a pattern-the same number being called from various pay phones in the neighborhood. If there were several hits, and I imagined there would be, you just call them all and eliminate the false positives by trial and error. I supposed this was a possibility Harry and I should have considered, but it didn’t really matter. Even if someone managed to intercept my number, as Kanezaki seemed to have done, they’d learn nothing more than a pager address.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“I want to meet with you,” he said. “I think we can help each other.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Look, I’m taking a big chance doing this. I know you might think I had something to do with what happened to your friend, and that you might want payback.”

“You might be right.”

“Yeah, well, I know you can find me eventually anyway. I figure I’m better off explaining what I think happened, rather than having to worry for the rest of my life about you sneaking up behind me.”

“What do you propose?” I asked.

“A meeting. Anyplace you want, as long as it’s public. I know if you listen to me you’ll believe me. But I’m afraid you might try to do something before you’ve listened. Like you did the last time we saw each other.”

I considered. If it was a setup, there were two ways in which they might try to get at me. The first way would be to have people watching Kanezaki, people who would move in as soon as I appeared on the scene. The second would be to monitor him remotely, with some kind of a transmitter, the way they had once done when Holtzer had tried to nail me after proposing a similar “meeting.”

The second way was more likely, because I would have a harder time spotting Kanezaki’s team if they didn’t have to keep him in visual contact. I could use Harry’s bug detector to eliminate the second possibility. I’d have to take him someplace deserted to eliminate the first.

“Where are you right now?” I asked him.

“Toranomon. Near the embassy.”

“You know Japan Sword? The antique sword shop in Toranomon 3-chome, near the station?”

“I know it.”

“Go there. I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”

“Okay.”

I clicked off. Actually, I had no intention of going to the sword shop, much as I enjoy browsing there from time to time. But I wanted Kanezaki and anyone he was with to take the trouble to set up there, while I established myself in a more secure venue.

I took a series of cabs and trains to the Imperial Palace Wadakuramon Gate. With its swarms of tourists, batteries of security cameras, and phalanxes of cops protecting the important personages inside, the Wadakuramon Gate would be a highly inconvenient place to have to gun someone down, if that’s what Kanezaki and company had in mind. Having him go there after I was already set up would force a potential surveillance team to move quickly, giving me a better chance to spot them.

I used Tatsu’s cell phone to call Kanezaki again when I had arrived. “Change of plans,” I told him.

There was a pause. “Okay.”

“Meet me at the Imperial Palace Wadakuramon Gate, across from Tokyo station. Come right now. I’m waiting in front. Approach me from Tokyo station so I can see that you’re alone.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I clicked off.

I found a taxi on Hibiya-dori, which intersects the boulevard that leads from Tokyo station to the Imperial Palace. I got in and asked the driver to wait, explaining that I would be meeting a friend here shortly. He clicked on the meter and we sat in silence.

Ten minutes later I saw Kanezaki approaching as I had requested. He was looking around, but didn’t spot me in the cab.

I cracked the window. “Kanezaki,” I said as he passed my position. He started and looked at me. “Get in.”

The driver activated the automatic door. Kanezaki hesitated-a cab obviously wasn’t quite the “public” place he had been hoping for. But he got over it and slid in next to me. The door closed and we drove off.

I told the driver to take us in the direction of Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronics mecca. I watched behind us but didn’t see any unusual activity. No one was scrambling to keep up with us. It looked like Kanezaki was alone.

I reached over and patted him down. Other than his cell phone, keys, and a new wallet, he wasn’t carrying anything. Harry’s detector stayed quiet.

I had the driver use backstreets to lessen the chance that someone could be tailing us. We got out, near Ochanomizu station, and from there continued a series of swift moves in trains and on foot to ensure that we were alone.

I finished the route in Otsuka, the extreme north of the Yamanote line. Otsuka is a neighborhood kind of place, albeit a somewhat seedy one, with a generous offering of massage parlors and love hotels. Beyond the locals who live and work there, it seems to cater primarily to older men in search of downmarket sexual commerce. Caucasians are rare there. If there were a surveillance team and they were white CIA-issue, Otsuka would make for a difficult approach.

We took the stairs to the second-story Royal Host restaurant across from the station. We went in and I looked around. Mostly families enjoying a night out. A couple of tired-looking salarymen avoiding an evening at home. Nobody out of place.

We sat in a corner that offered me a nice view of the street scene below.

I looked at him. “Go on,” I said.

He rubbed his hands together and looked around. “Oh man, if I get caught doing this…”

“Cut the dramatics,” I told him. “Just tell me what you want.”

“I don’t want you to think I had anything to do with your friend,” he said. “And I want us to put our heads together.”

“I’m listening.”

“Okay. To start with, I think… I think I’m being set up.”

“What does this have to do with my friend?”

“Just let me start at the beginning, and you’ll see, okay?”

I nodded. “Go ahead.”

He licked his lips. “You remember the program I told you about? Crepuscular?”

A waitress came over and I realized I was starving. Without checking the menu I ordered a roast beef sandoichi and their soup of the day. Kanezaki asked for a coffee.

“I remember it,” I told him.

“Well, Crepuscular was formally terminated six months ago.”

“So?”

“So it’s still going on anyway, and I’m still running it, even though the funding has been cut off. Why hasn’t anyone said anything to me? And where is the money coming from?”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Slow down. How did you find out about this?”

“A few days ago my boss, the Chief of Station, told me he wanted to see all the receipts I’ve collected from the program’s assets.”

“Biddle?”

He looked at me. “Yes. You know him?”

“I know of him. Tell me about the receipts.”

“Agency policy. When we disburse funds, the asset has to sign a receipt. Without the receipt, it would be too easy for case officers to skim cash off the disbursements.”

“You’ve been having these people… sign for their payouts?” I asked, incredulous.

“It’s policy,” he said again.

“They’re willing to do that?”

He shrugged. “Not always, not at first. We’re trained in how to get an asset comfortable with the notion. You don’t even bring it up the first time. The second time, you tell him it’s a new USG policy, designed to ensure that all the recipients of our funding are getting their full allotments. If he still balks, you tell him all right, you’re going out on a limb but you’ll see what you can do on his behalf. By the fifth time he’s addicted to the money and you tell him your superiors have reprimanded you for not getting the receipts, that they’ve told you they’re going to cut you off if you don’t get the paperwork signed. You hand the guy the receipt and ask him to just scrawl something. The first one is illegible. Later, they get more readable.”

Amazing, I thought. “All right. Biddle asks for the receipts.”

“Right. So I gave them to him, but it felt weird to me.”

“Why?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “When the program got started, I was told that I would be responsible for maintaining all the receipts in my own safe. I was worried about why the Chief suddenly wanted them, even though he told me it was just routine. So I checked with some people I know at Langley-obliquely, of course. And I learned that, for a program with this level of classification, no one would ask to see documentation unless someone had first filed a formal complaint with the Agency’s Inspector General with specific allegations of case officer dishonesty.”

“How do you know that hasn’t happened?”

He flushed. “First, because there’s no reason for it. I haven’t done anything wrong. Second, if there had been a formal complaint, protocol would have been for the Chief to sit me down with the lawyers present. Embezzling funds is a serious accusation.”

“All right. So you give Biddle the receipts, but you feel weird about it.”

“Yes. So I started going through the Crepuscular cable traffic. The traffic is numbered sequentially, and I noticed a missing cable. I wouldn’t have spotted it except that it occurred to me to check the numerical sequence. Ordinarily you wouldn’t notice something like that because no one ever searches the files by cable number, it’s too much trouble, and anyway, ordinarily the number isn’t even relevant. I called someone at East Asia Division at Langley and had her read the cable to me over the phone. The cable said Crepuscular was being terminated and should be discontinued immediately because the funding was being applied elsewhere.”

“You think someone on this end pulled the cable so you wouldn’t know the program had been terminated?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, nodding.

The waitress brought our order. I started wolfing down the sandwich.

He was feeling talkative and I wanted to hear more. We would get to Harry soon enough.

“Tell me more about Crepuscular,” I said, between bites.

“Like what?”

“Like when did it get started. And how you learned of it.”

“I already told you. Eighteen months ago I was told that Tokyo Station had been tasked with an action program of assisting reform and removing impediments. Code name Crepuscular.”

Eighteen months ago, I thought. Hmm. “Who put you in charge of the program originally?” I asked, although given the timeline, I already had a pretty good idea of the answer.

“The previous Station Chief. William Holtzer.”

Holtzer, I thought. His good works live on.

“Tell me how he presented it to you,” I said. “Be specific.”

He glanced to his left, which for most people is a neurolinguistic sign of recall rather than of construction. Had he looked in the opposite direction, I would have read it as a lie. “He told me that Crepuscular was compartmental classified, and that he wanted me to be in charge of it.”

“What was your precise role?”

“Development of target assets, disbursement of funding, overall management of the program.”

“Why you?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”

I suppressed a laugh. “Did you assume it was only natural that, despite your youth and inexperience, he recognized your inherent capabilities and wanted to entrust you with something so important?”

He flushed. “Something like that, I suppose.”

I closed my eyes briefly and shook my head. “Kanezaki, are you familiar with the terms ‘front man’ and ‘fall guy’?”

His flush deepened. “I might not be as stupid as you think,” he said.

“What else?”

“Holtzer told me that support for reform would involve funneling cash to specified politicians with a reformist agenda, the kind of reforms favored by the USG. The theory was that, to compete in Japanese politics, you need access to large quantities of cash. You can’t stay in office without it, so over time everyone either gets corrupted because they took the cash or weeded out because they refused to. We were going to change the equation with an alternate source of funds.”

“Funds acknowledged with receipts.”

“That’s policy, yes. I’ve told you.”

“I imagine that, when your assets are signing the receipts, they handle them?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

I wondered briefly why they hired these guys right out of college. “I’m curious,” I said, “whether you can think of any uses to which someone might want to put signed, fingerprinted documents acknowledging receipt of CIA-disbursed funding.”

He shook his head. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said. “The CIA doesn’t use blackmail.”

I laughed.

“Look, I’m not saying we don’t use it because we’re nice people,” he went on with almost comedic earnestness. “It’s because it’s been demonstrated not to work. Maybe you can use it to get short-term cooperation, but in the long term it’s just not an effective means of control.”

I looked at him. “Does the CIA strike you as an organization that’s particularly focused on the long term?”

“We try to be, yes.”

“Well, if you’re not under investigation for embezzlement, and blackmail is an alien notion at the CIA, what do you think Biddle is doing with those receipts?”

He looked down. “I don’t know.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“There’s one more thing that’s strange.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Protocol is, before every asset meeting, case officers have to fill out a form with particulars of the anticipated meeting: who, where, when. The purpose is to provide a record that other case officers can use if anything goes wrong. After the Chief’s request, I turned in the form saying I had an asset meeting tonight, although the truth is I don’t, but I left the place of the meeting blank.”

“And you got called on it.”

“Right. Which is weird. No one should be taking an interest in these things before a meeting. They’re for post-meeting contingencies. In fact, half the time, we don’t even bother filling them out until afterward. It’s too much of a pain. And you never hear anything about it.”

“What are you thinking?”

“That someone is observing these meetings.”

“For what?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Then I don’t see how I can help you.”

“All right. It’s possible someone is trying to gather some kind of evidence that I’ve been running Crepuscular by myself since it was terminated. Maybe in case it comes out, that way Biddle or whoever could just blame me.” He looked at me. “As their fall guy.”

Maybe the kid wasn’t so naïve after all. “You still haven’t told me what you want from me,” I said.

“I want you to run counter-surveillance tonight and tell me what you see.”

I looked at him. “I’m flattered, but wouldn’t you be better off going to the CIA Inspector General?”

“With what? Suspicions? Besides, for all I know, the IG and the Station Chief went to Yale together. Remember, as of six months ago, Crepuscular was shut down. At which point it effectively became illegal. And all this time I’ve been running it. Before I go through channels, I need to figure out just what is going on.”

I was quiet for a moment. Then I said, “What are you offering me in return?”

“I’ll tell you what I know about your friend.”

I nodded. “If what you tell me is convincing and valuable, I’ll help you.”

“You won’t renege?”

I looked at him again. “You’re going to have to take that chance.”

He pouted like a kid who thinks he’s made a reasonable request and is hurt that he isn’t being taken seriously.

“Okay,” he said after a moment. “The last time we met, I told you we identified Haruyoshi Fukasawa as an acquaintance of yours by intercepting a letter from him to Kawamura Midori. All we had from the letter was his first name, which is spelled with an unusual combination of kanji, and a postmark for the main Chuo-ku post office.”

That tracked pretty much with what Harry and I had come up with ourselves. “Keep going,” I said.

“There was a lot of information to sift through if we were going to make effective use of those two small bits of information. Local ward domicile records, tax records, things like that. We’d have to work outward in concentric circles starting with the Chuo-ku postmark. That meant manpower and local expertise.”

I nodded, knowing what was next. “So you outsourced it.”

“We did. To a Station asset named Yamaoto.”

Christ, they might as well have just put out a contract on Harry. I closed my eyes and thought for a second. “Did you tell Yamaoto why you were interested in Fukasawa?”

He shook his head. “Of course not. We just told him we wanted to know where a person with that name lived and worked.”

“What happened after that?”

“I don’t know. Yamaoto got us the addresses we wanted. We tailed Fukasawa as closely as we could, but he was surveillance conscious and we never managed to stay with him long enough to follow him to you.”

“You’re not telling me much that I don’t already know. What about Fukasawa’s death?”

“I went to his apartment the other day with diplomatic security to try to surveil him as usual. I told Biddle I didn’t think this was a good idea after our previous encounter, that it was personally dangerous for me, but he insisted. Anyway, I saw a lot of unusual activity. Police cars, and a-a cleanup crew for the sidewalk in front of his building. I looked into it and found out what had happened. When I told Biddle, he got totally pale.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning my impression was that he was both surprised and upset. If he was surprised, it means that someone else was responsible for this. I’m assuming it wasn’t an accident. That leaves you and Yamaoto. Since you’re here and seem to care, I’m also assuming that you and Fukasawa didn’t have some kind of falling out. That leaves Yamaoto.”

“Let’s assume that you’re right. Why?”

He swallowed. “I don’t know. I mean, at a general level, I would guess it would be either because Fukasawa posed some sort of threat or because he was no longer useful, but I don’t know more than that.”

“You ever see Fukasawa with a woman?”

He nodded. “Yes, we saw him coming and going several times with a Yukiko Nohara. She works at a club in Nogizaka called Damask Rose.”

I thought for a few minutes. My gut told me he was being straight. But I had no way of knowing for certain. Besides, for the little he’d given me, I wasn’t going to take the kind of chances that running counter-surveillance for him could entail.

Tatsu might be interested, though. And he might be better able to use Kanezaki’s meager information than I could.

“I’ve got a meeting in a few hours with someone who can help you with your problem,” I said. “Someone who can do more than I can.”

“Does that mean you believe me?”

I looked at him. “I haven’t decided yet.”

There was a pause, then he said, “My wallet.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Where is it?” he asked.

I chuckled. “It’s gone.”

“There were fifty thousand yen in it.”

I nodded. “Just enough for a gustation menu and an ’85 Rousseau Chambertin at a restaurant I like. I had to go out of pocket on the ’70 Vega Sicilia Unico I had with dessert, though, so next time you get it in your head to surveil me, bring along a few more yen, okay?”

He glowered. “You robbed me.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t pay a much higher price than that for trying to follow me, son. Now let’s see if the guy I’m going to see is willing to give you the assistance you want.”

I took him to Christie Tea & Cake, the kissaten that Tatsu had proposed earlier. We walked the short distance from JR Harajuku station. The proprietor, perhaps remembering me and my seating preferences from my Tokyo days, led us to one of the tables at the back of the long, L-shaped room, where we could sit hidden from the window in front.

Kanezaki ordered an Assam tea set. I asked for jasmine, both for myself and for our yet-to-arrive third party. After the day we’d just had, I figured Tatsu and I could use something low-caffeine.

We made small talk while we waited for Tatsu. Kanezaki was surprisingly garrulous, perhaps out of nervousness at his circumstances. “How did you get into this business?” I asked him.

“I’m third-generation American Japanese,” he told me. “Sansei. My parents speak Japanese, but they used English at home with me so I only learned what I picked up from my grandparents. In college I did a home-stay program in Japan, in Nagano-ken, and I loved it. Kind of put me in touch with my heritage, you know? After that, I took all the Japanese courses I could and did another home stay. During my senior year, I met a CIA recruiter on campus. He told me the Agency was looking for people with hard language skills-Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic. I figured what the hell. I took the tests, passed a background check, and here I am.”

“Has the job met your expectations?” I asked, with a small smile.

“Not exactly. But I can roll with the punches. I might be tougher than you think, you know.”

I thought of his surprising lack of fear during our initial encounter, the way he’d collected himself after watching me take out his partner, and wasn’t inclined to disagree.

“Anyway,” he went on, “the main thing is that the job puts me in a position to serve the interests of both countries. That’s what really attracted me to it in the first place.”

“How do you mean?”

“The U.S. wants Japan to reform. And Japan needs to reform, but lacks the internal resources to do it. So gaiatsu from the U.S. is in both countries’ interests.”

Gaiatsu means “foreign pressure.” I wondered briefly whether there was a country outside Japan that had a dedicated word for the concept.

“Sounds idealistic,” I said, probably failing to hide my dubiousness.

He shrugged. “Maybe. But we’re one world now. If Japan’s economy sinks, it’ll drag the U.S. down with it. So U.S. ideals and U.S. pragmatism on the one hand, and Japanese needs on the other, are all aligned. I feel lucky to be in a position to work for the countries’ mutual welfare.”

I had a brief image of this kid ten years from now, running for office. “You given any thought to what you’ll do if you ever have to choose?” I asked him.

He looked at me. “I’m American.”

I nodded. “Then as long as America lives up to her ideals, you ought to be fine.”

The waiter brought our tea. A moment later Tatsu appeared. If he was surprised to see me with Kanezaki, he didn’t show it. Tatsu has a great poker face.

Kanezaki looked at me, then at Tatsu. “Ishikura-san,” he said, half-rising out of his seat.

Tatsu bowed his head in greeting.

“You told us he was dead,” Kanezaki said, inclining his head toward me.

Tatsu shrugged. “At the time, I believed he was.”

“Why didn’t you get in touch when you learned he wasn’t?”

I saw a trace of amusement in Tatsu’s eyes at this kid’s straightforwardness, and he said, “Something tells me it was fortunate that I did not.”

Kanezaki furrowed his brow, then nodded. “That may be true.”

I looked at Kanezaki. “Tell him what you told me,” I said.

He did. When he was done, Tatsu said, “It seems the most likely explanation for this unusual chain of events is that Station Chief Biddle or someone else in the CIA is preparing to turn you into a twenty-first century Oliver North.”

“Oliver North?” Kanezaki asked.

“Yes,” Tatsu went on, “from the Iran-Contra scandal. The Reagan administration had decided to circumvent a congressional ban on funds to the Nicaraguan contras by selling arms to Iranian ‘moderates’ and channeling the resulting proceeds to the contras without Congress’s knowledge. Oliver North was a National Security Council staffer who ran the program day to day. When the program leaked, his betters in the NSC and the White House blamed him, as a way of escaping prosecution, for having instigated and run the program without their knowledge.”

Kanezaki paled. “I hadn’t thought about it that way,” he said, looking from left to right as though trying to rediscover his bearings. “Oh man, oh man, you’re right, this really could be like Iran-Contra. I don’t know who dreamed up Crepuscular in the first place, but someone terminated it, maybe Langley, or the NSC, or maybe even the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. And now Tokyo Station is still running it, I’m still running it, with funds from some source outside of Congress’s purview. Oh man, oh man.”

I had a feeling he was imagining himself getting sworn in before some special congressional committee established to investigate the latest scandal, sitting alone, his hand raised, the congressmen and their staffers prim and hypocritical behind their polished wooden dais, the video camera lights hot and blinding, while his superiors clucked their tongues and leaked to the press about the talented young CIA officer whose overly strong convictions had made him turn rogue.

Tatsu turned to me. “I have something for you.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Kawamura Midori. It seems that, in her zeal to locate you, she retained a Japanese private investigative firm. Many of these firms are staffed with ex-Keisatuscho and other law enforcement officials, and I have contacts among several. She knew where your friend lived and gave the firm his address. They attempted to follow him, but apparently were unable to do so because he was surveillance conscious. They did not learn your whereabouts. I believe this is why Kawamura-san came to my office recently with threats of a scandal. Her other means of locating you had not proven useful.”

She must have been using an inheritance from her old man-the fruits of the corruption that had enriched him and disgusted her. There was some irony there.

I thought of the way she had seemed evasive at the Imperial. Now I knew why. She’d hired a PI to tail Harry and didn’t want to tell me.

“These PI firms,” I said. “Are any of them connected to Yamaoto?”

“Doubtless.”

“That’s why he put Yukiko on Harry,” I said, finally seeing it. “It wasn’t the Agency’s request-they didn’t tell him Harry was connected to me. It was Midori’s PI people. She would have told them that they were following Harry to find me. When that information got back to Yamaoto, he wanted his own coverage-better coverage than the PI firm, or even the Agency, would be capable of. Her job was to stay close, really close, and learn as much as she could to help them get to me.”

I pictured it. Yamaoto, probably through intermediaries, got Harry’s boss to take Harry out to “celebrate” about that happy client. Harry’s boss wouldn’t know the purpose of all this, just where and when he was supposed to show up with Harry. Yukiko was waiting there, with a line about configuring her Macintosh and bedroom eyes behind it. Harry swallowed the whole thing without a burp. He led Yukiko and her employers straight back to his apartment, and eventually to me.

“Why kill him, though?” Kanezaki asked.

I shrugged, thinking of the way Murakami had growled Your name isn’t Arai. It’s Rain. “They’d learned who I was and knew where to find me. They didn’t need Harry anymore after that. And Yukiko would have learned about some of his skills-he was former NSA, a crack hacker. They would have viewed him as an asset of mine. Best to take him off the board.”

I thought of how deeply Harry had been in denial, how hostile he’d been to any suggestion that Yukiko might be setting him up. I sighed. “That’s probably how they found out who I was, too,” I said. “Harry and I had an argument about the girl. He probably told her he had a friend who said this and that, a friend her boss had recently taken to Damask Rose. They might have put two and two together from that. Or they might have shown the video from the club to Yamaoto, who knows my face. It doesn’t matter. Once they knew, they decided Harry had outlived his usefulness.”

There was a long silence. Then Tatsu said, “Kanezaki-san, what do you propose to do?”

Kanezaki looked at him, his expression uncertain. “Well, originally I wanted someone non-Agency to run counter-surveillance for me tonight. So I could know whether I’m being watched, or being set up, or whatever. But not you. You’re…”

Tatsu smiled. “I am Keisatsucho.”

“Right. It wouldn’t do to have the Japanese FBI observing a CIA meeting with a sensitive national asset.”

“I thought tonight’s meeting was fictitious, designed to test your theory that someone wishes your assets ill.”

“It is fictitious. But I’ve filled out paperwork saying that it’s real. If I get caught with you, the consequences will be the same.”

Tatsu shrugged. “If someone sees us together, you can tell them you are developing me as an asset. Following up on the original contact you and Station Chief Biddle made when you were looking for our friend here.”

Kanezaki looked at him. “Maybe I am developing you.”

I thought, Tatsu knew you were going to say that, kid.

“You see?” Tatsu asked. “Not so far-fetched.”

I thought of an old poker players’ expression: If you look around the table and can’t spot the sucker, the sucker is you.

No one said anything for a long time. Then Kanezaki let out a long breath and said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I could go to jail.”

“For a meeting with a potentially important asset?” Tatsu asked, and I knew the deal was closed.

“Right,” Kanezaki said, more to himself than to anyone else. “That’s right.”

I thought of another saying I once heard: It’s easiest to sell to a salesman.

All that training in how to suborn an asset into signing a receipt. Kanezaki had practically bragged about how adroitly a good case officer could do it. And yet he’d just stepped over a line without even looking down to see if it was there.

I thought of those pictorial representations of the food chain, a fish being swallowed by a bigger fish being swallowed by an even bigger one.

I glanced at Kanezaki and thought, At least Tatsu won’t betray you. Unless he absolutely has to.

18

WE ALL DEPARTED so that Kanezaki could go to his “meeting” and Tatsu could have men run counter-surveillance for him. We agreed to meet back at Christie in two hours. I asked Tatsu before we left whether he’d managed to get another gun for me. He told me he hadn’t.

I spent a short time browsing among the antiques in the basement of the nearby Hanae Mori Building. The shops were closed, but through the windows I admired the delicate Art Nouveau cameo glassware of artists like Daum Nancy and Emile Gallé. I lost myself in the little worlds depicted on the vases and tumblers: a green meadow inhabited by hovering dragonflies; windmills slumbering under a blanket of snow; a forest of trees so sensuous they seemed to sway in their glass etchings.

I returned to Christie well in advance of our follow-up meeting, but I didn’t wait there. Instead, I checked the places that a surveillance team would use if it were interested in someone in the shop, and then, confirming that these spots were deserted, I perched like one of Tokyo’s baleful ravens in the darkness atop the incline to the right of the shop, observing its entrance. Only after I had seen Kanezaki, and then Tatsu, return, and only after I had waited to ensure that they weren’t followed, did I descend and join them.

“We’ve been waiting,” Tatsu said when I came in. “I didn’t want to start without you.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I got held up.”

He looked at me as though he understood exactly what had caused the delay, then turned to Kanezaki and said, “I took two men to observe the area around your ostensible meeting. We discovered someone who was there attempting to photograph the proceedings.”

Kanezaki’s eyes bulged. “Photograph?”

Tatsu nodded.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“We took the individual into custody.”

“Oh man,” Kanezaki said, probably imagining the headlines in tomorrow’s papers. “Official custody?”

Tatsu shook his head. “Unofficial.”

“Who is he?” Kanezaki asked.

“His name is Edmund Gretz,” Tatsu said. “He came to Tokyo three years ago, hoping to make a living as a freelance photographer, with visions of models on runways. Instead he found himself giving English lessons at various Japanese corporations. But eventually he did manage to find someone interested in his talents as a photographer.”

“The Agency?” Kanezaki asked, his complexion pale.

“Yes. He is a contractor. Six months ago he was given training in surveillance and counter-surveillance and various other clandestine arts. Since then the Agency has contacted him three times. On each occasion, he was given a time and place where a meeting was to occur, and instructed to photograph the meeting as it progressed.”

“How did he know who he was shooting?”

“He was given a photograph of an ethnic Japanese who would always be a participant.”

“Me.”

“Yes.”

I shook my head in wonder and thought, You ought to just have “fall guy” printed on your business cards.

“And Gretz’s handler…” Kanezaki said.

“The Station Chief,” Tatsu answered. “James Biddle.”

“The same guy who wanted the receipts,” I said.

“Yes,” Tatsu answered.

“I imagine the contractor wasn’t able to shed any light on why,” I said.

Tatsu shook his head. “Gretz is only a flunky, with some skill behind the lens. He doesn’t know anything. His biggest concern was that no one should find out that we had picked him up, lest he lose his lucrative sidework or face deportation.”

“You couldn’t get anything more out of him?” Kanezaki asked.

Tatsu shrugged. “My men did not ask nicely. I don’t believe there was anything more to be gotten.”

“What does he do with the photos after he’s taken them?” Kanezaki asked.

“He delivers the prints to Biddle,” Tatsu said.

Kanezaki was drumming his fingers on the table. “What’s he going to do with those photos? Why would he do this to me?”

“I may have a way of finding out,” Tatsu said.

“What’s that?”

Tatsu shook his head. “Not yet. Let me make some discreet inquiries. I will contact you soon.”

Kanezaki’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Why would you help me?” he asked.

Tatsu looked at him. “I have my own reasons for wishing to avoid a scandal,” he said. “Among them, my desire that the reformers you have been trying to aid not be harmed by all this.”

Kanezaki’s expression loosened. He was scared. He wanted to believe that he had a friend. “Okay,” he said.

Kanezaki stood to go. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out a card, handed it to Tatsu. “Please, contact me as soon as you know more,” he said.

Tatsu stood, too. He gave him a card in return. “I will.”

Kanezaki said, “Thank you.”

Tatsu bowed low and said, “Kochira koso.” The same here.

Kanezaki nodded to me and walked away.

I waited a minute to allow Kanezaki to get clear, then said, “Let’s go.”

Tatsu understood. When I was a teenager, I once won a fight at a party. The guy I’d beaten left, while I enjoyed the feeling of being a hero. Trouble was, the guy returned a half-hour later, only this time with two friends. The three of them beat the crap out of me. The lesson was worth it. It taught me that, when the meeting is done, you leave, unless you want to take a chance on someone backing up on you.

We walked toward Inokashira-dori, the still darkness of Yoyogi Park to our right.

“How did it go today?” I asked as we walked. “With your man’s wife. His widow.”

Several seconds went by before he answered. “Fujimori-san,” he said, and I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about his fallen comrade or the wife. “I am fortunate to have had only three such conversations in my time with the Keisatsucho.”

We continued to walk in silence. Then I asked, “Any luck tracking Murakami today?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“The guy you interrogated?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Why did you want to see me tonight?”

“I wanted all my resources accessible, in case there was a hot lead on Murakami.”

“It’s personal now?” I asked.

“It’s personal.”

We walked in silence. “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “Just when I think I’m getting jaded, the CIA does something to really surprise me, like hiring a photographer to take pictures of its own case officers in case it needs to burn them. It’s refreshing.”

“There is no photographer,” Tatsu said.

I stopped and looked at him. “What?”

He shrugged. “I made him up.”

I shook my head and blinked. “There’s no Gretz?”

“There is a Gretz, in case Kanezaki thinks to check. A small-time dope dealer I once caught and let go. I had a feeling he might be useful later.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Tell me what I’m missing, Tatsu.”

“Not that much, really. I simply offered Kanezaki corroboration that his fears are not mere paranoia, while positioning myself as a friend.”

“Why?”

“I needed him to be thoroughly convinced that he is indeed being set up. We don’t yet have sufficient information to really know what action to take. I want him to be comfortable calling on me. Even eager.”

“Is he being set up, do you think?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Biddle’s request for the receipts seems suspicious, as does that missing cable, but I don’t pretend to understand all the CIA’s bureaucratic procedures.”

“Why would Biddle have been taking such an inordinate interest in Kanezaki’s meetings?”

“I don’t know. But it wasn’t to photograph them. My men observed nothing out of place at the meeting site. Certainly no one with a camera.”

He was being awfully open with me about his duplicity. Perhaps his way of telling me that he trusted me. The in-group and the out-group. Us and them.

We started walking again. “It was lucky, then, that the kid came to me with his suspicions,” I said.

“And that you came to me. Thank you for that.”

I shook my head, then said, “What do you know about Crepuscular?”

“No more than what Kanezaki has told us.”

“The politicians the program has been underwriting-are you working with any of them? Maybe the ones the disk didn’t implicate?”

“Some of them.”

“What happened? You learned from the disk that they weren’t in Yamaoto’s network. Then what?”

“I warned them. Simply sharing my information on Yamaoto’s methods, and on who among them was a Yamaoto stooge, turned them into considerably wiser, and harder, targets.”

“And you knew they were taking money from the CIA?”

“I knew of some, not necessarily all. From my position, I can only help protect these people from Yamaoto’s practices of extortion. But Kanezaki was correct in saying that in Japan’s system of money politics, honest politicians still need cash to compete against Yamaoto-funded candidates. And that I cannot provide.”

We walked wordlessly for a minute. Then he said, “I admit I was surprised to learn that these people would be foolish enough to sign receipts for CIA disbursements. I fault myself, for underestimating the depth of their gullibility. I should have known better. As a breed, politicians can be astonishingly stupid, even when they are not being venal. If it were otherwise, Yamaoto would have a much harder time controlling them.”

I thought for a moment. “Forgive me for saying so, Tatsu, but isn’t this whole thing just a waste of time?”

“Why do you say?”

“Because even if these guys have some ideals, even if you can protect them from Yamaoto, even if they have access to some cash, you know they can’t make a difference. Politicians in Japan are just ornamentation. The bureaucrats run the show.”

“Our system is strange, is it not,” he said. “An uncomfortable combination of domestic history and foreign intervention. The bureaucrats are certainly powerful. Functionally, they are the descendants of the samurai, with everything that lineage entails.”

I nodded. After the Meiji restoration in 1868, the samurai became the servants of the emperor, who was himself believed to be descended from the gods. The association connoted tremendous status.

“Then the wartime system put them in charge of the industrial economy,” he continued. “The American occupation maintained this system so America could rule through the bureaucracy rather than through elected politicians. All this led to an accrual of additional prestige, additional power.”

“I’ve always said Japan’s rule by bureaucracy is a kind of totalitarianism.”

“It is. But it is distinguished in that there is no Big Brother figure. Rather, the structure itself functions as Big Brother.”

“That’s my point. What can you gain by protecting a handful of elected politicians?”

“For the moment, perhaps not much. Today, the politicians act mainly as mediators between the bureaucrats and the voters. Their job is to secure for their constituents the biggest slice possible from the pie that the bureaucrats control.”

“Like lobbyists in the U.S.”

“Yes. But the politicians are elected. The bureaucrats are not. This means that the voters do exercise theoretical control. If they elected politicians with a mandate to rein in the bureaucracy, the bureaucrats would bend, because their power is a function of their prestige, and to oppose a clear political consensus would be to risk that prestige.”

I didn’t say anything. I understood his point, although I suspected his planning was so long-term as to be ultimately futile.

We walked for a few moments in silence. Then he stopped and turned to me.

“I would like you to have a chat with Station Chief Biddle,” he said.

“I’d love to,” I said. “Kanezaki seems to think Biddle was surprised to hear about Harry’s death, but I’d like to make sure. The problem is how to get to him.”

“The CIA Chief of Station is declared to the Japanese government. Many of his movements are no mystery to the Keisatsucho.” He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a photo. I saw a midforties Caucasian with a narrow face and nose, and close-cropped, sandy-colored thinning hair, the eyes blue behind tortoiseshell glasses.

“Mr. Biddle takes afternoon tea weekdays at Jardin de Luseine, in Harajuku,” he said. “Building Two. On Brahms-no-komichi.”

“A man of habit?”

“Apparently, Mr. Biddle believes that a faithful routine is good for the mind.”

“It might be,” I said, considering. “But it can be hell on the body.”

He nodded. “Why don’t you join him tomorrow?”

I looked at him. “I might do that,” I said.

I walked for a long time after leaving Tatsu. I thought about Murakami. I tried to find the nexus points, the intersections between his fluid existence and the more concrete world around him. There wasn’t much: the dojo, Damask Rose, maybe Yukiko. But I knew he’d be staying away from all of those for a while, possibly a long while, just as I would. I also knew he’d be running the same game against me. I was glad that, from his perspective, the good nexus points would seem to be in short supply.

Still, I wished I could have held on to Tatsu’s Glock. Ordinarily, I don’t like to carry an unambiguous weapon. Guns are noisy and ballistics tests can connect the bullet you left behind to the weapon that’s still in your possession. Besides, getting caught with a firearm in Japan is a guaranteed ticket to jail. Knives aren’t much better. A knife makes a mess that can get all over you. And any cop worth a damn in any country will treat someone caught with a concealed knife-even a small one-as dangerous and warranting additional scrutiny. With Murakami out there and on to me, of course, the risk and reward ratio of a concealed weapon had changed somewhat.

I wondered whether Tatsu would get anything useful out of the guy whose knee I had broken. I doubted it. Murakami would know that Tatsu was working that angle, and adjust his patterns to account for anything his captured man might reveal under pressure.

Yukiko might have some useful information. Murakami would have anticipated that route, too, but it was still worth exploring. Especially because, after what they had done to Harry, my interest in Yukiko had become independent of my interest in her boss.

I pictured her, the long hair, the aloof confidence. She might be taking precautions, after Harry. Murakami might even have warned her to be careful. But she was no hard target. I could get to her. And I thought I knew how.

I went to a spy paraphernalia shop in Shinjuku to buy a few things I would need. What the store offered to the public was almost scary: pinhole cameras and phone taps. Taser guns and tear gas. Diamond-bit drills and lock picks. All available “for academic purposes only,” of course. I contented myself with a Secret Service-style ASP tactical baton, a nasty piece of black steel that collapsed to nine inches and telescoped to twenty-six with a snap of the wrist.

Next stop was a sporting goods store, where I bought a roll of thirty-pound test high-impact monofilament fishing line, white sports tape, gloves, a wool hat, long underwear, and a canvas bag. Third stop, a drugstore for some cheap cologne, a hand towel, and a pack of cigarettes and matches. Next, a local Gap for an unobtrusive change of clothes. Then a novelty shop for a fright wig and a set of rotted false teeth. Finally, a packaging supply house, for a twenty-five-meter roll of translucent packing tape. Shinjuku, I thought, like an advertising jingle. For All Your Shopping Needs.

I holed up in another business hotel, this time in Ueno. I set my watch alarm for midnight and went to sleep.

When the alarm woke me, I slipped the long underwear on under my clothes and secured the baton to my wrist with two lengths of the sports tape. I wet the towel and wrung it out, put it and the other gear I had bought into the canvas bag, and walked out to the station, where I found a pay phone. I still had the card I had taken on my first night at Damask Rose. I called the phone number on it.

A man answered the phone. It might have been Mr. Ruddy, but I wasn’t sure.

“Hai, Damask Rose,” the voice said. I heard J-Pop playing in the background and imagined dancers on the twin stages.

“Hello,” I said, in Japanese, raising my voice slightly to disguise it. “Can you tell me who’s there tonight?”

The voice intoned a half-dozen names. Naomi was among them. So was Yukiko.

“Great,” I said. “Are they all there until three?”

“Hai, so desu.” Yes, they are.

“Great,” I said again. “I’ll see you later.”

I hung up.

I caught a cab to Shibuya, then did a foot SDR to Minami-Aoyama. I remembered Yukiko’s address from the time I had checked out her and Naomi’s backgrounds from Osaka, and I had no trouble finding her apartment building. The main entrance was in front. An underground garage was off to one side, accessible only by a grated metal door controlled by a magnetic card reader in a center island. No other ways in or out.

I thought of her white M3. Assuming that the night I had seen her in it wasn’t an anomaly, it was her commuting vehicle. She wouldn’t be driving it to Harry’s tonight, and Murakami would either be unreachable for the moment or he would have told her to stay away. I judged that there was an excellent possibility that she would be pulling in sometime after three.

I found a nearby building separated from its neighbor by a long, narrow alley. I moved into the shadows there and opened my bag of goodies. I took out the cologne and applied a heavy dose to my nostrils. Then I closed the bag and stashed it there, and walked into nearby Roppongi.

It didn’t take me long to find a homeless man who looked about the right size. He was sitting on a cinder block in the shadows of one of the elevated expressways of Roppongi-dori, next to a cardboard and tarp shelter. He was wearing overlarge brown pants cinched tight with a worn belt, a filthy checked button-down shirt, and a fraying cardigan sweater that two generations earlier might have been red.

I walked over to him. “Fuku o kokan site kurenai ka?” I asked, pointing to my chest. You want to trade clothes?

He looked at me for a long moment as though I was unhinged. “Nandatte?” he asked. What the hell are you talking about?

“I’m serious,” I said in Japanese. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

I shrugged off the nylon windbreaker I was wearing and handed it to him. He took it, his expression briefly incredulous, then wordlessly began to slip out of his rags.

Two minutes later I was wearing his clothes. Even through the heavy layer of cologne, the smell was horrific. I thanked him and headed back to Aoyama.

Back in the alley, I pulled on the fright wig and secured it with the wool hat, then popped in the false teeth. I lit a cigarette and let it burn down, then rubbed a mixture of ashes and spit onto my face. I lit a match and took a quick look at myself in a sawed-off dental mirror I keep on my key chain. I barely recognized what I saw, and I smiled a rotten-toothed smile.

I slipped on the gloves and walked out to the garage entrance of Yukiko’s building. I took the fishing line and translucent tape, but left the bag and the rest of its contents in the alley. There was a security camera mounted just above the grated garage door. I cut a wide path around it, then reapproached from the side farther from the street. The corner of the building jutted out a few centimeters, apparently for aesthetic reasons. I slid down low, using the jutting design for partial concealment. The average person pulling in or out wouldn’t notice me. Anyone who did would assume I was just some homeless man, probably drunk and passed out there. My getup was insurance against the very small chance that someone might call the cops. If anyone did show up to investigate, my appearance and smell would be strong incentive for them to just tell me to be on my way and leave it at that.

It was late, and not too many people were coming or going. After nearly an hour, I heard what I’d been waiting for: a car pulling into the driveway.

I heard it stop in front of the door, the engine idling. I pictured the driver rolling down the window, inserting a magnetic card into the reader. A moment later I heard the mechanical whine of the door rising. I counted ten seconds off before the sound stopped. I heard the car pull in.

The mechanical whine started again. I counted off five seconds, on the assumption that, with the assistance of gravity, the door would drop more quickly than it had risen. Then I darted out from my position, strode down to the door, dropped to my side, and rolled under it.

Lying on my back to keep my profile low, I raised my head and looked around. The structure was shaped like a large rectangle. There was a row of parked cars in front of each of the four walls, and two double rows lengthwise up the middle. The car that had just arrived pulled into a space in one of the middle rows. I rolled to a crouch and, keeping low, ducked behind a nearby car.

The elevators and a door marked “Stairs” were at the far end of the rectangle, opposite the grated doors I had just come through. A woman got out of the car that had come in, walked over to the elevators, and pressed a button. A second later, the doors opened. She went inside and the doors closed behind her.

I looked around. Concrete weight-bearing pillars were spaced every few meters throughout. There were no ramps, so I knew it was only one story. From its size and location, I gathered it was intended only to serve the residents of the building above.

Ideally, I would have gotten to Yukiko just as she left her car. But I had no way of knowing which parking space was hers, and she might easily see me coming if my guess left me too far away. The only choke point was the elevators. I decided to set up there.

I looked around for cameras. The only one I spotted was a large double CCTV installation mounted on the ceiling directly in front of the elevators, one unit facing the elevators, the other monitoring the garage. Except in high security installations, where CCTV is monitored in real time by guards, security cameras typically record to tape that gets recorded over every twenty-four hours unless there’s an incident that makes earlier review worthwhile. In a residential setup like this one, it was a safe bet that no one was watching the garage right now. But they’d sure as hell be reviewing the tapes the next day. I was glad I was disguised the way I was.

There was a metal guardrail set up in a U shape around the elevator entrance, with three breaks in it for access. It looked like something intended to force residents to use a separate freight elevator for bringing large items in and out of the building. For me it would serve a better purpose.

I took out the fishing line and tied one end of it to the top left of the U at knee level. Then I ran the line along the floor around the bottom points and the right top point of the U so that each break in access was covered. I secured it lightly to the floor with the translucent tape, then moved over to the nearest pillar, letting the line out as I walked.

Squatting low, I took out my key chain and used one of the keys to cut the line off. I put the spool back in one of the pants pockets along with the tape, then wrapped the excess line around one of my gloved hands. I stood and angled the dental mirror so I could see the garage door without having to expose myself from behind the pillar.

I waited like that for about an hour. Twice I heard the garage door and I checked with the mirror. The first time was a blue Saab. The second was a black Nissan. The third one was white. A Beemer. An M3.

My heart started kicking harder. I exhaled slowly and gripped the end of the fishing line.

I listened to the car as it got closer, closer. I heard it stop just a couple meters away. She had a good spot. Probably paid more for it.

I heard the door open and then close. Then the chirp chirp of an automatic door lock. I looked in the mirror to confirm that it was Yukiko and that she was alone. Right on both counts.

She was wearing a black trench coat and high heels. A purse was slung across her neck and one arm. None of it was ideal attire for reaction or maneuver. But it looked good.

I saw that her right hand was closed around a small canister. My guess was Mace or pepper spray. A woman, late at night, in a parking garage-maybe this was nothing out of the ordinary for her. But I had a feeling she was thinking about Harry, and about me. Good.

She was walking briskly. I watched as she approached the perimeter of the metal guardrail. My breath was moving in and out of my mouth in silent shallow drafts. One. Two. Three.

I jerked hard on the line. It popped up from its taped moorings to ankle level and I heard her cry of surprise as she tripped over it. She might have recovered her balance, but those stylish heels were on my side. I stepped out from behind the pillar just in time to see her spilling to the ground.

I shoved my keys back in a pants pocket and darted up behind her. By the time I reached her, she had pulled herself up on all fours. She still had the canister in one hand. I stomped on her wrist and she cried out. I reached down and yanked what she was holding from her fingers. I glanced at it quickly-oleoresin capsicum, seventeen percent. Pepper spray. The good stuff. I shoved it in a pocket and dragged her over to the nearest car, away from the cameras.

I shoved her up against the passenger-side door. She looked frightened, but I didn’t see any recognition in her eyes. Given my disguise, she might have been thinking that I was a mugger or rapist.

“You don’t remember me, Yukiko?” I asked. “We met at Damask Rose. I’m Harry’s friend. Was his friend.”

Her brow furrowed for a moment as she tried to square the evidence of her eyes with that of her ears. Then she saw it. Her mouth dropped open but no sound came out.

“Where can I find Murakami?” I asked.

She closed her mouth. She was breathing rapidly through her nose, but other than that she had managed to suppress any outward sign of fear. I almost admired her for her poise.

“If you want to live, you’ll tell me what I want to know,” I said.

She looked at me but said nothing.

I popped an uppercut into her gut. It was hard enough to hurt, but not too hard. I needed her to be able to talk. She gasped and doubled over.

“The next one is to that beautiful face,” I said. “When I’m through with your nose, teeth, and eyes, your dancing days will be over. Now I want to know one thing. Who killed him? Was it you, or was it Murakami?”

I didn’t really give a shit how she might answer. I certainly wouldn’t trust anything she said. But I wanted to give her the opportunity to plead something exculpatory, so she might believe I’d let her live if she told me where I could find her boss.

“It was… it was him,” she gasped.

“All right. Tell me where I can find him.”

“I don’t know.”

“You better think of something.”

“He’s hard to find. I don’t know how to reach him. He just shows up at the club sometimes.”

She glanced behind me, toward the garage door. I shook my head. “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “If you can just hold out long enough for another car to pull in, I’ll have to run and let you go. Or maybe someone saw what happened on those cameras, maybe they’re on their way now. But you’ve got it backward. If someone comes and you haven’t told me what I want to hear, that’s when I’ll kill you. Now where is he?”

She shook her head.

“We’re running out of time,” I said. “I’m going to give you one more chance. Tell me and you live. Don’t tell me and you die. Right here.”

She clenched her jaw and looked at me.

Damn, she was tough. I might have known, after seeing the way she handled her nitroglycerin-volatile boss.

“All right,” I said. “You win.”

I popped another uppercut into her midsection, this one hard enough to cause damage. She doubled over with a sharp exhalation of breath. I stepped behind her, took her head in one gloved hand and her chin in the other, and broke her neck. She was dead before she hit the floor.

I’d never done that to a woman before. I thought for a second of some of the things I had said to Naomi about subornment, about what Midori had said about atonement. But other than a detached observation about the relative ease of the maneuver because of the lighter muscle mass, I felt nothing.

“Say hello to Harry,” I said. I picked up her purse to make it look like she’d been the victim of a random robbery, collected the fishing line and tape, and took the stairs to the first floor. I let myself out through the front entrance, keeping my head down to avoid the camera there. I ducked around the corner into the alley, where I pulled off the hat and wig, spat out the false teeth, and rubbed the ash off my face with the damp towel. I pulled off the homeless man’s clothes and the long underwear and changed into what I had bought at the Gap, then shoved everything back into the bag. I ran a mental list of the contents of the bag to ensure I wasn’t leaving anything behind, then double-checked the ground just to be sure. Everything was copacetic. I took a deep breath and strolled back out onto Aoyama-dori.

When I was a few blocks away, I stopped under a streetlight and quickly went through her purse. There was nothing in it of interest.

I walked down Roppongi-dori until I found an appropriate colony of homeless men. I left the bag and the purse close by them and walked on, peeling off and dropping the gloves as I did so. I would get rid of the teeth elsewhere. They had my DNA on them, and weren’t the kind of item that Tokyo’s shifting populations of homeless men would assimilate and thereby sanitize.

Ducking into an alley, I discharged a shot from the canister of pepper spray to confirm that it worked. I decided to keep it. When Murakami learned about Yukiko, I might want a little extra protection.

19

THE NEXT AFTERNOON I did an SDR that finished at JR Harajuku station. I exited and let the eternal river of hip-hop shoppers, attired in ways that an extraterrestrial would probably find welcoming, carry me onto Takeshita-dori, Tokyo’s teen shopping mecca. Only in Tokyo could the jam-packed bizarrerie of a byway like Takeshita-dori exist side by side with the elegant teahouses and antiques shops of Brahms-no-komichi, and the stark contrast is one of the reasons Harajuku has always been one of my favorite parts of the city.

Tatsu had assured me that Biddle employed no bodyguards, but there’s nothing like independent verification to lower my blood pressure. There were a number of points from which I might approach Jardin de Luseine, and I moved around each of them, probing, imagining where I might position watchers if I were protecting someone in the restaurant. I walked in tightening concentric circles until I was sure that no one was positioned outside. Then I made my way back to Takeshita-dori, where I cut across an alley that ran alongside the restaurant itself.

I spotted him through the enormous plate-glass window on the alley side of the building. He was sitting alone, reading a newspaper, sipping something from a china cup. The same man I had seen in the photograph, elegantly dressed in a single-breasted blue pinstriped suit, a white shirt with a spread collar, and a burgundy rep tie. Overall the impression was fastidious, but not overly so; less American, more British; CEO rather than spymaster.

He was sitting in one of the window seats, with his profile to the alley, and that told me a lot: he was insensitive to his surroundings; he didn’t understand that glass is no deterrent to a sniper, or to an ordinary gunman; he thought like a civilian, not a spy. I watched him silently for a moment, imagining high native intelligence, within which he would take refuge when he found himself inadequate to the demands of the real world; Ivy League schools and possibly a graduate degree, from which he would have learned much about office corridors and nothing of the street; a passionless but adequate marriage to a woman who had borne him the required two or three children while dutifully following him from post to career-building post, hiding her growing sense of loss and inchoate desperation behind cocktail party smiles and repairing with increasing frequency to a refrigerated bottle of Chablis or Chardonnay to beat back the long silences of listless afternoons.

I went inside. The door opened and closed with an audible clack, but Biddle didn’t look up to check on who had entered.

I moved across the dark wood floor, beneath the Art Deco chandeliers, around Victorian tables and chairs, alongside a grand piano. Only when I was actually standing in front of him did he raise his head from his reading. It took him a half-second to recognize me. When he did he recoiled. “What the hell!” he stammered.

I sat across from him. He started to get up. I restrained him with a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Stay seated,” I said quietly. “Keep your hands where I can see them. I’m only here to talk. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”

His eyes bulged. “What the hell!” he said again.

“Calm down,” I told him. “You’ve been looking for me. Here I am.”

He exhaled sharply and swallowed. “Sorry,” he said. “I just didn’t expect to see you like this.”

I waited.

“All right,” he said, after a moment. “The first thing I should mention is that this has nothing to do with William Holtzer.”

I kept waiting.

“I mean, he didn’t have many supporters. He isn’t missed.”

I doubted Holtzer’s own family would miss him. I waited some more.

“So what we want, the reason we’ve been looking for you,” he went on, “is, we want you to, ah, interfere with someone’s activities.”

A new euphemism, I thought. So exciting.

“Who?” I asked, to let him know that he was finally on the right track.

“Well, just a second. Before we talk about that, I need to know, are you interested?”

I looked at him. “Mr. Biddle, I’m sure you know that I’m selective about whose activities I’ll ‘interfere’ with. So without knowing who, I couldn’t tell you whether I’d be interested or not.”

“It’s a man. A principal.”

I nodded. “Good.”

“ ‘Good’ meaning, you’re interested?”

“Meaning you haven’t made me uninterested, so far.”

He nodded. “You know the person we’re talking about. You met him recently, when he was following an acquaintance of yours.”

Only long-practiced discretion prevented me from showing my surprise. “Tell me,” I said.

“Kanezaki.”

“Why?”

He frowned. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”

“Let’s just say that my unhappy history with your organization necessitates higher than usual levels of disclosure.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you more than I have already.”

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to.”

“Or you won’t take the job?”

“Or I will take your life.”

He blanched, but other than that kept his composure. “I don’t really think this conversation calls for threats,” he said. “We’re discussing a business proposition.”

“ ‘Threats,” ’ I said, my tone thoughtful. “I’ve survived for a long time by identifying and preemptively eliminating ‘threats.’ So here’s my business proposition to you. Convince me that you’re not a ‘threat,’ and I won’t eliminate you.”

“I don’t believe this,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”

“Tell me, so we can get it right on the headstone.”

He glowered at me. After a moment, he said, “All right, I’ll tell you. But only because it makes sense for you to know, not because of your threats.” He took a sip from the china cup. “Kanezaki is a rogue. He’s been running a secret program that could cause embarrassment on both sides of the Pacific if it were to get out.”

“Crepuscular?” I asked.

His mouth dropped open. “You know… how could you possibly know about that? From Kanezaki?”

You dumb bastard, I thought. Whatever I knew, you just confirmed it.

I looked at him. “Mr. Biddle, how do you think I’ve lasted as long as I have in this line of work? I make it my business to know what I’m stepping into and whether the reward is worth the risk. That’s how I stay alive and my clients get their money’s worth.”

I waited while he digested this new worldview.

“What else do you know about this?” he asked after a moment, trying to be shrewd now.

“Plenty. Now tell me why you’ve decided that Kanezaki has become a liability. From what I understand, up until now he’s been your golden boy.”

He crinkled his nose as though at an offensive odor. “In his own mind he’s golden. Forgive me, but simply having Japanese blood doesn’t give someone special insights into this country.”

I shook my head to show him that of course his comment didn’t offend me.

“Insight into this country, any country, takes years of education, experience, sensitivity,” he said. “But this kid, he thinks he knows enough to design and run his own damn foreign policy.”

I nodded to show that I was sympathetic to his point, and he continued.

“All right, you know there was a program. But it was shut down six months ago. I don’t necessarily agree with the shutdown, but my private thoughts on the matter are irrelevant. What is relevant is that Kanezaki has been continuing it on his own.”

“I can see where that would be a problem,” I said.

“Yes, well, it’s a shame in some ways. He’s got a lot of passion and he’s not without talent. But this matter must be put to rest, before some real damage occurs.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

He looked at me. “I want you to… look, I understand that you can arrange these things so that it looks as though the person did it himself.”

“That’s true,” I said, noting that he had initially spoken of what “we” want and was now saying “I.”

“Well, that’s what needs to be done. Is there a usual fee?”

“For a CIA officer? The fee would be high.”

“All right. What is it?”

He was eager enough so that I was half-tempted to bilk him. Make him pay up front, then Sayonara, asshole.

And maybe I would. But I still had a few questions.

“Let me ask you,” I said, furrowing my brow in my best Columbo imitation. “How do you know about me? About my services?”

“The Agency has a dossier on you,” he said. “Most of it assembled through Holtzer’s efforts.”

“Oh,” I said. “Of course. That makes sense. And when you first started looking for me, was it for the same job you’re offering me today?”

He wouldn’t know that I was aware he had been with Kanezaki when he had first approached Tatsu inquiring about my whereabouts. The question was designed to trip him up.

But it didn’t. “No,” he said. “The original thinking was that we could use you for Crepuscular. But the program is done now, as I said. There may still be some role in the future, but for now I just need you to tie up loose ends.”

I nodded. “It’s just that it’s strange. I mean, you had Kanezaki looking for me, right?”

“Yes,” he said. His tone was cautious, as though he was afraid of what I might ask next and was already trying to think of an answer.

“Well, isn’t that odd? Given that you actually wanted me to ‘interfere’ with him.”

He shook his head. “He was only supposed to locate you, not actually meet you. I was going to handle the meeting personally.”

I smiled, seeing the truth.

“All right,” he said. “I’d read your dossier. I thought it was possible that, if you learned that someone was trying to find you, you might, as you put it, see that person as a threat and act accordingly.”

I almost laughed. Biddle had been looking for a freebie.

“What about the guy who was with him at the time?” I asked. “Kanezaki said he was diplomatic security.”

“He was. What of it?”

“Why would you offer a bodyguard to a guy you wanted taken out?”

He pursed his lips. “Solo surveillance against someone like you is impossible. Kanezaki needed a partner. I wanted someone from outside the Agency, someone who wouldn’t know what was really going on.”

“Someone expendable.”

“If you want to put it that way.”

“Mr. Biddle,” I said, “I’m getting the feeling that this is a personal matter.”

There was a long pause, then he said, “What if it is?”

I shrugged. “It’s all the same to me, as long as I get paid. But we’re not off to a good start. You’ve been telling me that the problem with Kanezaki is that he’s a rogue, that his activities could cause embarrassment on both sides of the Pacific. It sounds as though the potential embarrassment is more localized than that.”

He looked at me. “What I told you is not untrue. But yes, I have personal reasons, as well. What do you think is going to happen to me as Kanezaki’s direct supervisor if his activities are discovered?”

“Likely a shit storm. But I don’t see how Kanezaki’s suicide would solve your problems. Won’t there still be records of his activities? Receipts from disbursements, that kind of thing?”

His eyes narrowed. “I’m taking care of that,” he said.

“Sure, you know better than I do. I’m just mentioning it. By the way, where do you suppose Kanezaki has been getting the money to run Crepuscular even after the higher-ups have shut off the spigot? I imagine we’re talking about some significant sums.”

He glanced to his right. The glance said, Think of something.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“If you keep lying to me,” I said, my tone mild, “I’m going to start seeing you as a threat.”

He looked at me for a long moment. Finally he said, “All right. Kanezaki has been getting the money from a man named Fumio Tanaka. Someone with inherited money and the right political sympathies. I don’t see that as relevant to the job at hand.”

I paused as though considering. “Well, even if Kanezaki goes away, Tanaka is still around, isn’t he? Why don’t I interfere with his activities, too?”

He shook his head violently. “No,” he said. “That won’t be necessary. I’ve asked for your assistance with a particular matter and would like an answer with regard to that matter only, please.”

“I’ll need a way to contact you,” I said.

“Will you take the job?”

I looked at him. “I want to think about your story first. If I decide I can work with you safely, I’ll do it.”

He took out a Mont Blanc Meisterstück, unscrewed it, and scrawled a number on a napkin. “You can reach me here,” he said.

“Oh, one more thing,” I said, taking the napkin. “The guy you were using to try to get to me. Haruyoshi Fukasawa. He died recently.”

He swallowed. “I know. Kanezaki told me.”

“What do you think happened there?”

“From what Kanezaki told me, I gather it was an accident.”

I nodded. “The thing is, Fukasawa was a friend of mine. He wasn’t much of a drinker. But apparently he was loaded when he fell from that roof. Strange, isn’t it?”

“If you think we had something to do with this…”

“Maybe you can just tell me who did.”

He glanced to his right again. “I don’t know.”

“Your people were following Harry. And I know his death was no accident. If you can’t do any better than what you’ve already told me, I’m going to start assuming that it was you.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know who did it. Even assuming it wasn’t an accident.”

“How did you find out where Harry lived in the first place?”

He repeated Kanezaki’s story about Midori’s letter.

“With only that to go on, you must have used local resources,” I suggested.

He looked at me. “You seem to know a lot. But I’m not going to start confirming or denying the specifics of local resources for you. If you suspect local resources might have been involved in your friend’s death, I can’t help you. As I said, I don’t know.”

I wasn’t going to get any more out of him in a place like this. I wished for a second we were alone.

I got up to go. “I’ll be in touch,” I said.

Tatsu and I had agreed to meet in Yoyogi Park after I’d braced Biddle. I went there, taking the usual precautions. He was already waiting, sitting on a bench beneath one of the park’s thousands of maple trees, reading a newspaper, looking like some of the retirees in the area who were passing the day doing the same thing.

“How did it go?” he asked.

I briefed him on what Biddle had told me.

“I know of Tanaka,” he said when I was done. “His father founded an electronics company in the twenties that survived the war and prospered afterward. Tanaka sold it when his father died and has been living off the considerable proceeds ever since. He is said to have an enormous libido, particularly for a man nearing seventy. He is also said to be addicted to codeine and other narcotics.”

“What about his politics?”

“He has none, so far as I know.”

“Then why would he want to fund an Agency program to aid reformers?”

“I’d like you to help me find out.”

“Why?”

He looked at me. “I need a bad cop. And we may get a lead about Murakami.”

“Nothing from the guy you took into custody?”

He shook his head. “The problem is that he is much more afraid of his boss than he is of me. But I’ve always been impressed by how much a man’s attitudes will change at between forty-eight and seventy-two hours of sleep deprivation. We may learn something yet.”

He took out his cell phone and input a number. Asked a few questions. Listened. Issued instructions. Then he said, “So da. So da. So.” That’s right. That’s right. Yes.

He hung up and turned to me. “One of my men is on his way to pick us up now. He will take us to Tanaka’s residence, which is in Shirokanedai.”

Shirokanedai is arguably Tokyo’s poshest neighborhood. Apart from the main artery of Meguro-dori, which runs through it, its narrow streets of elegant single-family homes and apartments are astonishingly hushed and peaceful, as though the neighborhood’s money has managed to buy off the tumult of the surrounding city and send it somewhere else. There’s a sort of relaxed class about the place. Its women, known locally as shiroganeze, look at home in their furs as they promenade their toy poodles and Pomeranians between visits to tea shops and boutiques and salons; its men, secure behind the wheels of the Beemers and Benzes that carry them to their high-powered jobs; its children, relaxed, carefree, not yet even aware that their neighborhood is the exception to life in Tokyo and elsewhere, not the rule.

Tatsu’s man picked us up as promised and drove us the ten minutes to Shirokanedai.

Tanaka lived in an oversized, two-story detached house in Shirokanedai 4-chome, across from the Sri Lankan embassy. Its most distinguishing characteristics, aside from its size, were the cars parked in its driveway: a white Porsche 911 GT with a massive spoiler, and a bright red Ferrari Modena. Each was spotless and gleaming and I wondered whether Tanaka actually drove them or merely exhibited them as trophies.

The property was gated and sat on an elevated plot of land that gave it the feel of a castle looking out upon the lesser dwellings around it. Tatsu and I got out and went through the gate, which was unlocked. He pressed a button next to the double wooden doors and I heard a long series of baritone chimes from within.

A moment later a young woman answered the door. She was pretty and looked Southeast Asian, maybe Filipina, and was dressed in a classic black-and-white maid’s uniform, complete with some sort of white lace cap atop her upturned coiffure. The getup was just this side of what a medium-class pervert might ask for in one of Tokyo’s “image clubs,” where customers can be serviced by girls dressed as students, nurses, or any other profession whose uniform might provoke a fetish, and I wondered what the full range of this woman’s household duties might actually be.

“May I help you?” she asked, looking first at Tatsu, then at me.

“I am Keisatsucho Department Head Ishikura Tatsuhiko,” Tatsu said, producing his ID, “here to speak with Tanaka-san. Would you get him for me?”

“Is Tanaka expecting you?” she asked.

“I don’t believe so,” Tatsu said, “but I am certain he will be happy to see me.”

“Just a moment, please.” She closed the door and we waited.

A minute later the door opened again, this time by a man. I recognized him instantly: the guy I had noticed at Damask Rose, with the chemically and surgically maintained superficially youthful appearance.

“I am Tanaka,” the man said. “How may I be of assistance?”

Tatsu displayed his ID again. “I would like to ask you a few questions. For the moment, my interest in you is peripheral and unofficial. Your cooperation, or lack of it, will determine whether my interest changes.”

Tanaka’s expression was impassive, but the tension in his body and angle of his head told me that Tatsu had his full attention. Despite all the lawyers I had no doubt were in his employ, despite likely entourages of sycophants and underlings, this was a man who was afraid of real trouble, the kind of real trouble he would have just seen when he looked in Tatsu’s eyes.

“Yes, please, come in,” he told us. We took off our shoes and followed him through a circular entranceway with a floor of checkerboard black-and-white marble tiles. At the rear was a winding stairwell; to the sides were reproductions of some sort of Greek statues. We entered a mahogany-paneled room with four sides of floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Like the cars out front, the books looked as though they were frequently dusted and never read.

Tatsu and I sat on a burgundy pincushion leather couch. Tanaka sat across from us in a matching armchair. He asked us if he could offer us something to eat or drink. We declined.

“I didn’t get your associate’s name,” Tanaka said, looking at me.

“His presence here, like mine, is unofficial for now,” Tatsu said. “I hope we can keep it that way.”

“Of course,” Tanaka said, in his nervous eagerness overlooking the fact that Tatsu had ignored his question. “Of course. Now, please tell me whatever it is you need.”

“Someone is attempting to implicate you in a U.S. program that directs funds to certain Japanese politicians,” Tatsu said. “Although I believe you are involved in this program, I don’t believe you are responsible for it. But I need you to convince me that I am correct in this belief.”

The color drained from behind Tanaka’s tan. “I think… it would be best for me to consult with my legal counsel.”

I looked at him, imagining how I would kill him so he could see it in my eyes. “That would be uncooperative,” I said.

Tanaka looked at me, then at Tatsu. “The money isn’t even mine. It doesn’t come from me.”

Tatsu said, “Good. Tell me more.”

Tanaka licked his lips. “This conversation will remain unofficial?” he asked. “If someone finds out, it would be very bad for me.”

“As long as you cooperate,” Tatsu said, “you have nothing to fear.”

Tanaka looked at me for confirmation. I gave him a smile that said I was secretly hoping he would be uncooperative, so I could go to work on him.

Tanaka swallowed. “All right. Six months ago I was told to contact someone who works in the U.S. Embassy. A man named Biddle. I was told that Biddle represented certain parties who hoped to secure a source of campaign funding for reformist politicians.”

“Who told you to do this?” Tatsu asked.

Tamaka glanced at Tatsu, then down. “The same person who provides the money for this thing.”

Tatsu looked at him. “Please be more specific.”

“Yamaoto,” Tanaka whispered. Then: “Please, I’m cooperating. This conversation must remain unofficial.”

Tatsu nodded. “Keep going,” he said.

“I met with Biddle and told him, as I was instructed, that I believed Japan needed radical political reform and that I wanted to help in any way I could. Since that time, I have provided Biddle with some one hundred million yen for distribution to politicians.”

“These people are being set up,” Tatsu said. “I want to know how.”

Tanaka looked at him. “I was only following instructions,” he said. “I’m not really involved.”

“I understand,” Tatsu said. “You’re doing fine. Now tell me.”

“For three months, I gave Biddle cash without asking for anything in return. Then I pretended to be concerned about whether I was being conned. ‘Who is this money really going to?’ I asked him. ‘Tell me, or I’ll cut you off!’ At first he resisted. Then he told me I would know these people, could probably figure out who they would be just from reading the paper. Then he gave me names. I pretended to be satisfied, and gave him more money.

“Then I acted paranoid again. I said, ‘You’re just making this up. Prove to me that you really are giving my money to the people who need it and not keeping it for yourself!’ Again, he argued at first. But eventually he agreed to tell me when and where a meeting would occur. And then another.”

Jesus Christ, I thought.

“How many meetings did Biddle inform you of?” Tatsu asked.

“Four.”

“And what did you do with that information?”

“I passed it along to… to the person who provides the funding, as I was instructed to do.”

Tatsu nodded. “Give me the names of the participants in those four meetings, and the dates.”

“I don’t remember the exact dates,” Tanaka said.

I smiled and started to stand. Tanaka flinched. Tatsu put a hand out to restrain me and said, “Be as accurate as you can.”

Tanaka intoned four names. A ballpark date for each. I sat down.

“Now give me every other name you got out of Biddle,” Tatsu said.

Tanaka complied.

Tatsu didn’t write anything down, and I realized he knew these people well. “Very good,” he said when Tanaka was done. “You have been most cooperative and I see no reason for anyone to learn that this conversation took place. Of course, should I need any further information, I may call on you again. With similar discretion.”

Tanaka nodded. He looked a little sick.

The maid saw us to the door. The car was waiting outside. We got in back and drove off. I told them to drop me off at nearby JR Meguro station. Tatsu’s man drove the short distance to the station and waited in the car while Tatsu and I stood outside to wrap things up.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“He’s telling the truth,” Tatsu said.

“Maybe. But who put him in touch with Biddle?”

He shrugged. “Probably one of the Agency’s tainted assets, someone with connections to Yamaoto. If Biddle were canvassing these assets to try to find a supporter for Crepuscular, word would have gotten back to Yamaoto.”

“And Yamaoto would have seen an opportunity to turn the program to his own ends.”

He nodded, then said, “What do you think Yamaoto did on those four occasions in which he learned where and when Kanezaki would be meeting with his assets?”

I shrugged. “Observers. Using parabolic microphones, telephoto lenses, low-light video.”

“Agreed. Now assume Yamaoto has audio and video recordings of these meetings in progress. What is the value of these materials to him?”

I thought for a moment. “Blackmail, mostly. ‘Do as I tell you, or I release these photos to the media.” ’

“Yes, that is Yamaoto’s preferred method. And it is remarkably effective when the photos are of an extramarital affair in progress, or a liaison with a young boy, or some other socially unacceptable behavior. But here?”

I thought again. “You think video and audio of a meeting with Kanezaki wouldn’t be damning enough?”

He shrugged. “The audio might be, if the recorded conversation were sufficiently incriminating. But the video would be of lesser consequence: a politician chatting with a man, apparently Japanese, in a public place.”

“Because no one knows who Kanezaki is,” I said, beginning to catch on.

He looked at me, waiting for me to put it together.

“They need a way to make Kanezaki a household name,” I said. “To get his picture in the paper. That gives the photos punch.”

He nodded. “And how to do that?” he asked.

“I’ll be damned,” I said, finally seeing it. “Biddle was playing right into Yamaoto’s hands. He’s been positioning Kanezaki as his fall guy, giving him full responsibility for Crepuscular so that, if it ever got out, he’d have a ‘rogue’ who could take all the heat. But now, if Kanezaki becomes publicly known as the poster child for CIA skullduggery, the politicians who have been photographed with him are going down, too.”

“Correct. Biddle can no longer burn Kanezaki without burning the very reformers he presumably wants to protect.”

“That’s why he wants him dead,” I said. “A nice, quiet suicide to preempt a scandal.”

“Biddle would meanwhile destroy the receipts and any other evidence of Crepuscular’s existence.”

I thought for a moment. “There’s something off, though.”

“Yes?”

“Biddle’s a bureaucrat. In the ordinary course of things he wouldn’t just resort to murder. He’d have to be feeling desperate.”

“Just so. And what produces desperation?”

I looked at him, realizing that he’d already put it together. “Personal reasons, as opposed to institutional ones.”

“Yes. So the question is, what is Biddle’s personal stake in all this?”

I considered. “Professional embarrassment? Problems with his career, if Kanezaki were burned and a scandal erupted about the CIA’s Tokyo Station?”

“All that, yes, but something more specific.”

I shook my head, not seeing it.

“What do you think precipitated Biddle’s request for those receipts, and his request that you assist with Kanezaki’s ‘suicide’?”

I shook my head again. “I don’t know.”

He looked at me, perhaps mildly disappointed that I hadn’t managed to keep up with him. “Yamaoto got to Biddle the same way he got to Holtzer,” he said. “He created assets that Holtzer and Biddle believed were real. They basked in the reflected glory of the intelligence the ‘assets’ produced. Then, when he judged the time was propitious, Yamaoto revealed to them, privately, that they had been duped.”

I imagined Yamaoto’s conversation with Biddle: If word gets out that your “assets” are all run by the other side, your career is over. Work with me, though, and I’ll keep things quiet. I’ll even make sure that you get more assets and more intel, and your star will keep rising.

“I understand,” I said. “But somehow Yamaoto miscalculated this time, because Biddle thinks he’s got a way out. Just get rid of Kanezaki and destroy all the evidence of Crepuscular’s existence.”

He nodded. “Yes. And what does that tell us?”

I considered. “That Crepuscular has an unusually small distribution list. That Langley doesn’t know of it, because if they did, Biddle wouldn’t be able to contain it just by eliminating Kanezaki and burning some paperwork.”

“So it seems that Mr. Biddle has been running Crepuscular on his own initiative. He told you the program was terminated six months ago, did he not?”

I nodded. “And Kanezaki told me he discovered cable traffic to that effect.”

“Biddle’s story is that Kanezaki has been running a rogue program since that time. Given that Tanaka has only been dealing with Biddle, it seems likely that the rogue is in fact Biddle, who was using Kanezaki as his unwitting front man.”

“Yamaoto wouldn’t know that Crepuscular wasn’t officially sanctioned,” I said, nodding. “He would have assumed that the program was within the knowledge of Biddle’s superiors back at Langley. But it sounds like, outside of Biddle and Kanezaki, no one on the U.S. side is aware of it.”

He bowed his head as though acknowledging the valiant efforts of a slow student who had shown a hint of progress. “Which is why Yamaoto missed the possibility that Biddle would see Kanezaki’s elimination as a solution to Yamaoto’s blackmail.”

“You can’t really fault Biddle’s reasoning,” I said, looking at him closely. “With Kanezaki gone, Yamaoto’s blackmail evidence would lose most of its power. Meaning your network of reformers would be a lot safer if Kanezaki exited the scene.”

He grunted, and I realized that I was enjoying the sight of him struggling with what for him was a moral dilemma. “What about the reformers Kanezaki’s been meeting with?” I asked. “If he gets exposed, they’ll be at risk.”

“Several of them may be.”

“An acceptably small number?”

He looked at me, knowing where I was going. I said it anyway. “What would you do if there had been five? Or ten?”

He scowled. “These are decisions that can only be made case by case.”

“Yamaoto doesn’t make these decisions case by case,” I said, still pushing. “He knows what needs to be done and he does it. That’s what you’re up against. You sure you’re equal to the task?”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Do you think I seek to be this man’s ‘equal’? Yamaoto would not account for the fact that these politicians are themselves to blame for their current predicament. Or for the fact that Kanezaki’s motives are essentially good. Or for the fact that this young man presumably has a mother and father who would be ruined by his loss.”

I bowed my head, acknowledging his point and the conviction behind it. “Those men are finished, then?” I asked.

He nodded. “I have to assume that Yamaoto owns them now, and warn the others.”

“What about Kanezaki?”

“I’ll brief him on our meetings with Biddle and Tanaka.”

“Tell him his boss tried to put a contract out on him?”

He shrugged. “Why not? The young man already feels indebted to me. This sentiment might prove useful in the future. No harm in reinforcing it now.”

“What about Murakami?”

“As I said, we will continue to question the man we took in. He may provide us with something useful.”

“Contact me as soon as you have something. I want to be there when it happens.”

“So do I,” he said.

20

I CHECKED THE Imperial voice mail account from a pay phone. A mechanical female voice told me that I had one message.

I tried not to hope, but the attempt felt pretty thin. The female voice instructed me to press the “one” key if I wanted to hear the message. I did.

“Hi, Jun, it’s me,” I heard Midori say. There was a pause, then, “I don’t know if you’re still really staying at the hotel, so I don’t know if you’ll even get this message.” Another pause. “I’d like to see you tonight. I’ll be at Body and Soul at eight o’clock. I hope you’ll come. Bye.”

The female voice told me the message had been left at 2:28 P.M., that I should press the “one” key if I wanted to repeat it. I pressed it. And again.

There was something so disarmingly natural about the way she called me Jun, short for Junichi. No one calls me Jun anymore. No one knows the name. I had been using Junichi, my real name, selectively even before leaving Tokyo, and had discarded it entirely afterward.

Hi, Jun, it’s me. Such an ordinary message. Most people probably get ones like it all the time.

It felt as though the ground beneath me had borrowed some extra gravity from somewhere.

The part of my brain that has served me well for so long spoke up: Place and time. Could be a setup.

Not from her. I didn’t buy that.

Who else might have heard that message, though?

I considered. To intercept the message, someone would have to know where I was staying and under what fictitious name, and they’d have to be able to hack the hotel voice mail system. Outside of Tatsu, who wasn’t a current threat, there wasn’t much chance of that.

A chance, though.

My response to that was, The hell with it.

I went to see her.

I took a long, meandering route, moving mostly on foot, watching as the city gradually grew dark around me. There’s something so alive about Tokyo at night, something so imbued with possibilities. Certainly the daytime, with its zigzagging schools of pedestrians and thundering trains and hustle and noise and traffic, is the more upbeat of the city’s melodies. But the city also seems burdened by the quotidian clamor, and almost relieved, every evening, to be able to ease out into the twilight and set aside the weight of the day. Night strips away the superfluity and the distractions. You move through Tokyo at night and you feel that you’re on the verge of that thing you’ve always longed for. At night, you can hear the city breathe.

I stopped at an Internet café to check the Body & Soul website and see who was playing. It was Toku, a young vocalist and flugelhorn player who had already developed a reputation for a soulful sound that belied his twenty-nine years. I had two of his CDs but hadn’t seen him perform.

It was possible that Yamaoto had learned that Midori was in Tokyo from the investigative firm she had retained. If so, there was a chance she was being watched, perhaps by Murakami himself. I did a thorough check of the likely spots around the club. They were all clear.

I went in at about eight thirty. The place was full, but the doorman let me in when I told him I was a friend of Kawamura Midori, who was here for Toku’s performance. “Oh yes,” he told me. “Kawamura-san mentioned that someone might come. Please.”

She was sitting at the end of one of the two long tables that parallel Body & Soul’s walls and overlook the floor, where the musicians were set up. I scanned the room but didn’t spot any likely threats. In fact, the evening’s demographic was young, female, and obviously there to see Toku, who, with his quintet, was now captivating them with his elegiac “Autumn Winds.”

I smiled at what the band was wearing: T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers. They all had long hair, died chapatsu brown. Their contemporaries would think it was cool. To me they looked young.

I made my way to where Midori was sitting. She watched my approach but made no move to greet me.

She was wearing a black, form-fitting sleeveless turtleneck that looked like lightweight cashmere, her face and her arms luminous in contrast. She leaned back in her chair, and I saw a pair of leather pants, soft with age and use, and high-heeled boots. Other than a pair of diamond stud earrings, she’d left things unadorned. I’d always liked that she didn’t overdo the jewelry or makeup. She didn’t need to.

“I didn’t really expect you,” she said.

I leaned in so she could hear me over the music. “You didn’t think I’d get your message?”

She cocked an eyebrow. “I didn’t think you’d show up if I proposed the time and place.”

She caught on fast. I shrugged. “Here I am.”

There were no seats open, so she got up and we leaned against the wall, our shoulders not quite touching. She took her drink with her.

“What’s that you’re having?” I asked.

“Ardbeg. You introduced me to it, remember? It tastes like you now.”

“I’m surprised you enjoy it, then.”

She glanced at me, sidelong. “It’s a bittersweet flavor,” she said.

A waitress came by and I ordered an Ardbeg. We listened to Toku sing about sorrow and loneliness and regret. The crowd loved him.

When the set was over and the noise of the ensuing applause had died down, Midori turned to me. I was surprised to see concern on her face, even sympathy. Then I realized why.

“Did you… you must have heard about Harry,” she said.

I nodded.

“I’m sorry.”

I waited a second, then said, “He was killed, you know. Those PIs you put on him got word to the wrong people.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You know… they told me it was an accident.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“How do you know?”

“Circumstances. At one point they thought they had me, so they figured they didn’t need him. Besides, his stomach was full of alcohol. But Harry didn’t drink.”

“Oh my God,” she said, her hand over her mouth.

I looked at her. “Next time, hire a firm that takes its confidentiality obligations a little more seriously.”

She shook her head, her hand still over her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking down. “That wasn’t fair. This was nobody’s fault but the people who did it. And Harry’s, for not having known better.” I told her a sanitized version of how they had set him up, and how he had refused to listen to me.

“I liked him,” she said when I was done. “I wondered whether he was lying to me when he told me you were dead. That’s why I hired those people to watch him. But he seemed like a good person. He was cute and shy and I could tell he looked up to you.”

I smiled wanly. Harry’s eulogy.

“If I were you,” I said, “I’d be careful in Tokyo. They lost me, but they’ll be looking for me again. If they know you’re here, they might take an interest. Like they did with Harry.”

There was a long pause. Then she said, “I’m going back to New York tomorrow anyway.”

I nodded slowly, knowing what was coming.

“I won’t see you after this,” she said.

I went for a smile. It came out mostly wistful. “I know.”

“I figured out what I want from you,” she said.

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “At first what I thought I wanted was revenge. I kept thinking of how to hurt you, how to cause you pain, like the pain you caused me.”

I wasn’t surprised.

“And I resented you for that,” she went on, “because I’ve always believed that hate is such an unworthy emotion. So weak and ultimately pointless.”

I marveled briefly at how innocent a life someone would have to have led for such a philosophy to emerge credible and intact, and for a second I loved her for it.

She took a sip of her Ardbeg. “But seeing you the other day changed that. Part of it was realizing that you really did try to get that disk back and finish what my father had started. Part of it was knowing that you were trying to protect me from the other people who were trying to find the disk.”

“But what was it really?”

She looked away, over to where the band had been playing, then back to me. “Understanding what you are. You’re not part of the real world. Not my real world, at least. You’re like a ghost, some creature forced to live in the shadows. And I realized that someone like that isn’t worthy of hatred.”

Whether I was worthy of hatred and whether she hated me weren’t the same thing. I wondered if she knew that. “Pity, instead?” I asked.

She nodded. “Maybe.”

“I think I might have preferred having you hate me,” I said. I was trying for light, but she didn’t laugh.

She looked at me. “So all we have left is tonight.”

I almost said no. I almost told her it would hurt too much.

Then I decided I would deal with the hurt afterward. The way it’s always been.

We went to the Park Hyatt in Shinjuku. She was staying at the Okura but going back there together would have been too dangerous.

We took a cab to the hotel. We looked at each other on the way but neither of us spoke. I checked us in, and when we got to the room, we left the lights off. It seemed natural that we should walk over to the enormous windows, where we watched the urban mass of Shinjuku twinkling in the violet light around us.

I looked out at the city from my lofty perch and thought of all the events that had led to this precise instant, this moment that I had imagined and ridiculously longed for so many times and that I was now trying to savor even as I felt it slipping irrevocably away.

At some point I felt her looking at me. I turned and reached out, tracing the outline of her face and neck with the back of my fingers, trying to burn all the details into my mind, wanting to have them with me later when she would be gone. I found myself saying her name, quietly, over and over, the way I say it when I’m alone and I’m thinking of her. Then she stepped in close and put her arms around me and pulled us together with surprising strength.

She smelled the way I remembered, clean, with a trace of perfume that remains a mystery to me, and I thought of wine, the kind you wait and wait to decant and then hesitate to drink because afterward it’ll be gone.

We kissed for a long time, gently, not hurrying, standing there in front of the window, and at some point I really did forget what had brought us here together and why we would have to depart alone.

We pulled off each other’s clothes the way we had that first time, fast, almost angrily. I removed the baton from where it was taped to my forearm and set it down. She knew better than to ask about it. When we were naked, still kissing, she pressed against me so that I had to move backward toward the king-sized bed. My legs bumped against it and I sat down on its edge. She leaned forward, one hand on the bed, the other on my chest, and pushed me down onto my back. She knelt astride me, one hand still on my chest, and reached down for me with the other. She squeezed for a second, hard enough to make it hurt. Then, looking at me with her dark eyes but still saying nothing, she guided me in.

We moved slowly at first, tentatively, like two people unsure of each other’s motives. My hands roamed the landscape of her body, now moving on, now lingering somewhere in response to the pace of her breathing or the pitch of her voice. She put her hands on my shoulders, pinning me with her weight, and began to ride me harder. I watched her face, silhouetted by the reflected light of the windows, and felt some intangible thing like heat or current surging between our bodies. I brought my feet up to the bed and from the slightly altered angle of our bodies I felt myself moving more deeply inside her. Her breathing shortened and quickened. I tried to hold back, not wanting to let go before she did, but she moved faster, more urgently, and I started to go over the edge. A sound, part growl, part whimper, came from her throat, and she leaned forward so that her face was almost touching mine and she looked in my eyes and as I felt her coming and as I came too she whispered, “I hate you,” and I saw that she was crying.

Afterward she straightened but kept her hands on my shoulders. She dipped her head forward so that shadows obscured her face. She made no sound but I felt her tears falling onto my chest and neck.

I didn’t know what to say, or even whether to touch her, and we remained that way for a long time. Then she eased off me and walked silently to the bathroom. I sat up and waited. After a few minutes she came out, wearing one of the hotel’s white terrycloth robes. She looked at me but didn’t say anything.

“You want me to go?” I asked.

She closed her eyes and nodded.

“Okay.” I got up and started pulling on my clothes. When I was done I faced her.

“I know you’re doing well in New York,” I said. “Ganbatte.” Keep it up.

She looked at me. “What are you going to do?”

I shrugged. “You know how it is with us creatures of the night. Gotta find a rock to crawl under before the sun comes up.”

She forced a smile. “After that.”

I nodded, thinking. “I’m not sure.”

There was a pause.

“You should work with your friend,” she said. “It’s the only thing for you.”

“Funny, he’s always saying that, too. Good thing I don’t believe in conspiracies.”

The smile reappeared, a little less forced this time. “His motives are probably selfish. Mine aren’t.”

I looked at her. “I’m not sure whether I can trust your motives, after what you just said to me.”

She looked down. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. You were being honest. Although I don’t think anyone has ever been honest with me in quite that way. At least not at that moment.”

Another smile. It was sad, but at least it looked genuine. “I’m being honest now.”

I needed to get it over with. I moved in close, close enough to smell her hair and feel the warmth of her skin. I paused there for a moment, my eyes closed. Took a deep breath. Slowly let it out.

I used English to avoid the unambiguous finality of sayonara. “Goodbye, Midori,” I said.

I walked to the door and, habitual as always, checked through the peephole. The corridor was empty. I moved into it without looking back.

The hallway was hard. The elevator was a little easier. By the time I got to the street I knew the worst was over.

A voice spoke up inside me, quiet but insistent. So is the best, it said.

21

I MADE MY way through the backstreets of Shinjuku, heading east, deciding where I wanted to stay for the night and what I would do when I awoke the following morning. I tried not to think about anything else.

It was late, but there were small clusters of people about, moving like dim constellations in the surrounding emptiness of space: vagrants and beggars; hustlers and pimps; the disheartened, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed.

I hurt, and I couldn’t think of a way to make the pain go away.

My pager buzzed.

Of course I thought, Midori.

But I knew it wasn’t her. She didn’t have the number. Even if she did, she wasn’t going to use it.

I looked at the display, but didn’t recognize the caller.

I found a pay phone and dialed the number. It rang once, then a woman answered in English. She said, “Hey.”

It was Naomi.

“Hey,” I said. “I almost forgot I’d given you this number.”

“You don’t mind my using it, I hope.”

“Not at all. Just a little surprised.” I was surprised. My alertness had bumped up a notch.

There was a pause. “Well, things were slow tonight at the club and I got off a little early. I wondered if you might want to come by.”

It was hard to imagine a slow night at Damask Rose, but maybe it was true. Even so, I would have expected her to want to go someplace first-a late dinner, a drink. Not just a standard tryst at her apartment. My alertness edged up further.

“Sure,” I said. “If you’re not too tired.”

“Not at all. Would love to see you.”

That was odd. She’d pronounced “would” like something halfway to “we’d.” The blurring was contrary to her usual Portuguese accent. A message? A warning?

I looked at my watch. It was almost one thirty. “I’ll be there in about an hour.”

“I can’t wait.”

I heard her click off.

Something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what.

There was the oddity of her having contacted me. And the story about having come home early, although I suppose the latter might adequately explain the former. Her tone seemed pretty normal. But there was that peculiarly pronounced word.

The question was, what would I do if I knew it was a setup? Not what I would do if I suspected, but if I knew.

I went to another pay phone and called Tatsu. I got his voice mail. I tried again. No dice. He must have been on a stakeout or something.

Well, he does have a day job, I thought. But shit.

The safe thing, the smart thing, would have been to stay away until I could go in with backup. But there might be an opportunity here, and I didn’t want to let it slip.

I took a cab to the edge of Azabu Juban. I knew the security layout outside Naomi’s apartment well, of course, having reconnoitered and exploited it myself the night I had waited for her in the rain. The building on that perpendicular side street, with the awning and the plastic garbage bins, was a perfect spot. If someone were waiting for me, he’d wait there. Just like I had waited for her.

I was making my way to the end of the street that led to the back of the building when I heard the buzz of a two-cycle motorbike coming toward me. It was a pizza delivery scooter with a portable warmer strapped to the back and a sign advertising the shop that had dispatched it. I watched carefully to confirm that it was nothing other than what it seemed. Yeah, just a young guy trying to make a few extra yen with a late night job. I could smell the pizza from inside the warmer.

I had an idea.

I flagged him down. He pulled up next to me.

“Can you do me a favor?” I asked him in Japanese. “For ten thousand yen.”

His eyes widened a bit. “Sure,” he said. “What is it?”

“There’s a building at the end of this street, on the right as you approach it from this direction. It’s got an awning and a bunch of garbage containers stacked up along its side. I think a friend of mine might be waiting for me there, but I want to surprise him. Can you drive past it from the other direction, take a good look as you go by, and tell me if you see anyone there?”

His eyes widened more. “For ten thousand yen? Yeah, I can do that.”

I pulled out my wallet and took out a five-thousand-yen note. “Half now, half when you get back,” I said.

He took the money and buzzed off. Three minutes later he was back.

“He’s there,” he said. “Right where you told me.”

“Thanks,” I said, nodding. “That was a lifesaver.” I gave him the other five thousand yen. He looked at it, his expression momentarily unbelieving. Then he broke into an enormous sunny grin.

“Thanks!” he said. “This is great! Anything else you need?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Not tonight.”

He looked a little wistful, then smiled again as though he knew he’d been hoping for too much. “Okay, thanks again,” he said. He gunned the engine and drove away.

I untaped the baton and palmed it in my right hand. I took out Yukiko’s pepper spray and held it in my left. I moved with the furtiveness I had learned in long-range recon patrols in Vietnam, hugging the buildings I passed, checking each corner, each hot spot, confirming it was clear before advancing farther.

It took me almost a half-hour to cover the hundred meters to the ambush site. When I was three meters away, the cover provided by the garbage bins had thinned too much for me to go any farther. I hunkered low, waiting.

Five minutes went by. I heard the strike of a match, then saw a cloud of blue smoke waft out from just beyond a stack of containers. Whoever was waiting there wasn’t Murakami. Murakami wouldn’t have done something so stupid.

I eased the pepper spray back into a pocket and slowly extended the baton to its full length, tugging at the end to ensure that the components were locked in position, gripping it in my right hand. I watched the smoke rising from in front of me and timed the inhalations and exhalations. I waited until I knew he was inhaling, when his attention would be somewhat distracted by the pleasure of sucking in all that tasty nicotine. In, out. In, out. In…

I leaped out from where I was crouching and shot forward, the baton arm curled past my neck as though I was trying to scratch my opposite shoulder, my free hand up, defending my face and head. I covered the distance in an instant and saw the man as soon as I cleared the edge of the garbage containers just behind him. It was one of Murakami’s bodyguards, wearing a black waist-length leather jacket, with shades and a wool watch cap for light disguise. He’d heard the sudden sound of my approach and was in the midst of turning his head toward me when I burst into his position.

His mouth started to drop open, the cigarette dangling uselessly from his lips. His right hand went for one of the coat pockets. I saw everything slowly, clearly.

I stepped in with my right foot and whipped the baton into the side of his face. His head ricocheted left from the force of the blow. The shades flew off. The cigarette shot out of his mouth, tumbling like a spent rifle cartridge, followed by an explosion of teeth and blood. He staggered back into the building and started to slide down the wall. I stepped in close and brought the butt end of the baton up under his chin, arresting his descent.

“Where’s Murakami?” I asked.

He coughed up a mass of blood and dental matter.

I patted him down while he gagged and tried to collect himself. I found a Kershaw knife like Murakami’s in his coat and a cell phone in a belt clip. I pocketed both.

I pressed hard with the baton. “Where is he?” I asked again.

He coughed and spat. “Naka da,” he said, the words deformed by his injuries. Inside.

“Where’s your other man?”

He groaned and tried to reach for his face. I shoved the baton up into his neck. He grimaced and lowered his arms.

“Where’s your other man?” I asked again.

He sucked and wheezed. “Omote da.” In front.

Made sense. That’s the coverage I would have used.

I brought the baton down and jabbed its tip into his solar plexus. He doubled over with a grunt. I stepped behind him, brought the baton across his windpipe, and jammed a knee into his spine. I arched back, pulling him backward with the baton and pushing forward with my knee. His hands flew to the steel to relieve the pressure but it was already too late. His larynx was crushed. He struggled silently for another half-minute and then sagged back into me.

I eased him down to the ground and looked around. All quiet. I pulled off his cap and coat and slipped them on. I hunted around on the ground for the shades-there they were. I pulled them on, too.

I dragged the body as deeply as I could into the shadows, then picked up his still-lit cigarette and stuck it in my mouth. I slammed the baton onto the pavement to close it, slipped it in one of the coat pockets, and palmed the pepper spray.

Unlike the back of the building, the front offered no perpendicular streets and thus fewer vantage points. There was really only one good spot there, I knew: the alley alongside the building directly across the street.

I walked around to the front of the building, the shades and hat on, the cigarette burning. I kept my head down and my eyes forward, the same posture these guys would have been using to avoid witnesses and cameras.

I saw him across the street as soon as I rounded the corner. He was dressed like his recently deceased partner. I made my way directly to his position, moving fast, confidently. The shades we were wearing were great for light disguise, but were hell on night vision. He thought I was his partner. He stepped out of the shadows as though to greet me, perhaps unsure of why I had abandoned my post.

When I was three meters away I saw him purse his lips in confusion. At two meters his jaw started to drop open as he realized something was definitely wrong. At one meter all his questions were answered with a mouthful of pepper spray.

His hands flew to his face and he staggered backward. I spat out the cigarette, dropped the canister into a jacket pocket, and withdrew the baton. I snapped it open, stepped behind him, and whipped it across his windpipe the way I had done to his buddy, this time with a stronger cross grip that crushed the carotids along with the larynx. His fingers clawed at the metal and his feet scrabbled for purchase for a few seconds as I dragged him back into the alley, but by the time we had reached the shadows he was dead. I patted him down and found another knife and another cell phone. I left the knife. The cell phone I took.

I collapsed and pocketed the baton and made my way to the end of the street, where I found a pay phone. I didn’t know if Naomi had caller ID and didn’t want to take a chance on trying her from one of the cell phones I had just acquired.

I called her. She picked up on the third ring, her voice a little uncertain. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.”

A pause. “Where are you?”

“I’m not going to be able to make it tonight. I’m sorry.”

Another pause. “That’s okay. It’s fine.” She sounded relieved.

“I just wanted to let you know. I’ll be in touch soon, okay?”

“Okay.”

I hung up and returned to the back of her building. I eased into the shadows next to the body I had left there.

One of the cell phones I was carrying started to vibrate. I pulled it out and opened it.

“Hai,” I said.

I heard Murakami’s signature growl and felt adrenaline dump into my system. “He’s not coming tonight,” he said. “I’ll be down in a minute. Call Yagi-san and be ready to move.”

I guessed Yagi was one of the guys I’d taken out. “Hai,” I said.

He clicked off.

I dropped the cell phone back in the coat pocket. I took out the baton and kept it retracted in my right hand. I held the pepper spray in my left. My heart was thudding steadily in my chest. I took in a deep breath through my nose, held it, and let it out.

The back entrance was the less obvious, less trafficked choice. Also, it lacked a security camera. I knew he’d come out there, just like I had.

I stayed at the edge of the diffused light from a nearby streetlamp, where Murakami would see me but where my appearance would be obscured by shadows. I needed him to come as close as possible, to maximize the element of surprise. Surprise might be the only advantage I would have over him.

Two minutes later he emerged from the rear door. I hung back just inside the shadows, the shades on, the hat pulled low.

There was a dog with him, straining on a leash. It took me a second to recognize it without the muzzle. The white pit bull, the one that had been in the car after my fight with Adonis.

Oh fuck.

I almost turned and ran for it. But a dog’s most atavistic instincts are triggered by flight, and there was too great a chance that the thing would have caught me and brought me down from behind. I’d have to play this out.

At least Murakami’s attention was partly engaged by the animal. He saw me and lifted his head in curt acknowledgment, then looked down at the dog, which had begun to growl.

Nice doggy, I thought. Nice fucking doggy.

They came closer. Murakami looked up at me again, then back to the dog. The damn thing was really growling now, staccato killing sounds that rumbled up from deep in its chest.

Murakami didn’t seem unduly concerned. I guessed that a dog that took gunpowder and steroids with its Alpo and jalapeño pepper suppositories for dessert might growl at the fucking wind, and that Murakami would be used to the behavior, might even welcome it.

They came closer. The dog was starting to get out of control, snarling and straining at the leash. Murakami looked down at it. I heard him say, “Doushitanda?” What the hell is with you?

Then his head started to come up. He wasn’t as close as I wanted, but I knew his next glance was going to put things together. I wasn’t going to get a better opportunity.

I leaped out at them and closed the distance in two long strides. Murakami reacted instantly, releasing the leash and getting his hands up to protect his upper body and head.

It was a well-trained reaction and I’d been expecting it. Ignoring the dog, which I ranked as the lesser threat, I dropped to a crouch, cocked my right arm back, and whipped it forward like a tennis backhand. The baton started telescoping out. By the time it reached Murakami’s lead ankle, it had achieved its proper twenty-six inches. The impact of that steel to his ankle was one of the best feelings I’d ever known. If I’d missed, I would have been dead a few seconds later.

But I didn’t miss. I felt bone shatter under the steel and heard Murakami howl. An instant later all I could see was white dog, coming at me like a cruise missile.

I managed to get my left arm up in front of my throat. The dog shot forward and clamped onto it just above the wrist. There was an explosion of pain. The impact knocked me backward.

I knew if I fell to my back with that creature on top of me there wouldn’t even be body parts for the clean-up crew afterward. Partly by instinct, partly by judo training, I let our paired momentum somersault us backward and rolled into a squat on the other end of it. The dog still had me just above the wrist, snarling and shaking its head, holding on in a dead game grip the way it had been trained. I couldn’t feel anything in my arm anymore.

I tried to bring the baton up and crack the thing over the head, but I couldn’t. The dog’s claws scraped against the pavement, seeking purchase, leverage from which it could force me over onto my back.

I dropped the baton and reached around with my good hand, scrabbling for its testicles. The beast dodged left, then right, knowing what I was going for. I found it anyway. I grabbed that canine package and yanked downward as hard as I’ve ever yanked anything in my life. The jaws loosened and I jerked my arm free.

I lurched to my feet. The dog writhed for a moment, then got its legs under it. It snarled and looked up at me with bloodshot eyes.

I glanced at my left hand. It was clamped around the pepper spray canister with rigor mortis determination. The tendons must have locked up from the pressure of the animal’s jaws.

The dog’s muscles coiled together. I pried the canister loose with my good hand. The dog leaped. I turned the canister forward and depressed the trigger.

There was a satisfying sound of gas escaping under pressure, and a red cloud hit the beast directly in the face. Its momentum carried it into me and knocked me backward, but it was jerking and slobbering now, no longer attacking. I kicked out from under its twitching body and rolled to a crouch.

The dog started writhing on the ground, rubbing its snout frantically into the tarmac as though trying to wipe off the substance that was causing its agony. I held the canister closer. When the animal turned its wheezing face toward me, I aimed directly into its nose and depressed the trigger. A thick cloud jetted out, and then, just as suddenly, died, the canister’s contents exhausted.

But it was enough. The dog’s body launched into spasms that made its previous writhing look like playful stretching by comparison. Oleoresin capiscum irritant is ordinarily nonfatal, but I thought a concentrated dose like the one the dog had just received might prove the exception.

I looked over at Murakami. He was on his feet, but was keeping his weight entirely off his wounded ankle. He had the Kershaw in his right hand, held close to his body.

I looked down and saw the baton. I swept it up in my good hand and approached him, my left arm hanging uselessly.

He was growling from deep in his chest, sounding not unlike his dog.

I moved around him in a wary circle, forcing him to adjust, trying to gauge the extent of his mobility. I knew the ankle shot had been potent. I also knew that he might try to exaggerate the extent of the damage, to get me to overcommit and attempt to finish him too quickly. If he could grab the baton or otherwise get inside my guard, his knife and two good arms would prove decisive.

So I took my time. I feinted with the baton. Left, then right. I circled toward the knife hand, making it more difficult for him to snatch something with his free fingers, keeping him moving, stressing the ankle.

I let him get used to the left/right feints. Then I ran one straight up the middle, jabbing the steel directly at his face and neck. He parried with his free hand, trying to grab the baton, but I’d been expecting it and snapped the unit out of the way in time. The, just as suddenly, I backhanded it in, cracking him along the side of his skull.

He dropped to one knee but I didn’t rush in. My gut told me he was faking, again trying to lure me inside, where he could neutralize the greater distance afforded by the baton.

Blood ran down from the side of his head. He looked at me and for a split instant I saw fear sweep across his face like a sheet of driving rain. His feints hadn’t worked and he knew it. He knew I was going to wear him down carefully, methodically, that I wasn’t going to do anything stupid that he could exploit.

His only chance would be something desperate. I circled again and waited for it.

I let him get a little bit closer, close enough to give him hope.

I feinted and dodged, forcing him to move on his ankle. He was panting now.

With a loud kiai he lunged at me, reaching with his free hand, hoping to snag a jacket sleeve and reel me into the knife.

But his ankle slowed him down.

I took a long step back and to the side and snapped the baton down on his forearm. I traded force for accuracy and speed, but it was still a solid shot. He grunted in pain and I took two more steps back to assess the damage. He held his injured arm against his body and looked at me. He smiled.

“C’mon,” he said. “I’m right here. Finish me off. Don’t be afraid.”

I circled again. His taunts meant nothing to me.

“Your friend screamed on the way down,” he said. “He…”

I closed the distance with a single step and thrust the baton into his throat. He raised his injured arm to try to grab it, but I had already retracted it across my body. In the same motion I changed levels, dropping into a squat, and whipped the baton into his leg again. He screamed and crumbled to his knees.

I stepped behind him, away from any possibility of a lunge.

“Did he sound like that?” I snarled, and brought the baton down on his head like a hatchet.

He sank down to his side, then fought to regain his balance. I brought the baton down again. And again. Gouts of blood flew from his scalp. I realized I was yelling. I didn’t know what.

I rained blows down on him until my arm and shoulder ached. Then I took a long step backward and sank down to my knees, sucking wind. I looked over at the dog. It was still.

I waited a few seconds to catch my breath. I tried to jam the baton closed but couldn’t. I looked at it and saw why. The straight steel rod had deformed into a bow shape from what I had done to Murakami.

Jesus. I stood up and dragged his body into the shadows under the awning, next to what was left of his buddy. Dragging him one-armed was a bitch but I managed it. The dog was easier. I took the cell phones out, wiped them down, and dropped them. Ditto for the shades. Last was the baton. I didn’t want to be found walking around with a twenty-six-inch murder weapon bent into the shape of one of the victim’s skulls. I shrugged off the leather jacket I had taken and dropped it on top of the mess.

Some of the buckets near the awning had collected rainwater. I used them to wash the area down and make the blood less obvious. I wiped them for prints when I was done.

Last stop was the front of the building, where I found the cigarette I had spat out before taking out the second guy. I stubbed it out and pocketed the butt.

I walked over to Naomi’s building and pressed a knuckle to her apartment buzzer. A moment later I heard her voice. Her tone was fearful. “Who is it?” she asked.

For a second I couldn’t even remember what I’d told her to call me when I’d first met her at the club. Then I remembered: my real name.

“It’s me,” I said. “John.”

I heard her breathing. “Are you alone?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“All right. Just come up. Hurry.”

The door buzzed and I opened it. I kept my head low so that whoever would surely be reviewing the building security tapes later that morning wouldn’t get a good look at my face. I took the stairs to the fifth floor and knocked softly on her door when I got to it.

I saw the light blotted out for a moment behind the peephole. Then the door opened. Her mouth opened wide when she saw me.

“Oh meu deus,” she said, “meu deus, what happened?”

“I ran into them on their way out.”

She shook her head and blinked. “Come in, come in.” I walked into the genkan and she closed the door behind me.

“I can’t stay,” I said. “Someone is going to find them out there soon, and when that happens there are going to be cops swarming all over your neighborhood.”

“Find them…,” she said, then recognition hardened onto her features. “You… you killed them?” She shook her head as though she couldn’t believe it. “Oh merda.”

“Tell me what happened.”

She looked at me. “They came for me at the club tonight. They told me I had to leave with them but wouldn’t say why. I was really scared. They made me take them back here, up to my apartment. Murakami had a dog with him. He told me he would sic it on me if I didn’t do exactly what he wanted.”

She looked at me, afraid, I thought, of what I might be thinking.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Keep going.”

“He told me he knew I’d been seeing you outside the club, that he knew I had a way to contact you. He told me to call you and ask you to come over.”

“He was probably bluffing,” I said. “Maybe the bugs picked it up when you gave me your e-mail address that first night, and he played on that. Or maybe Yukiko sensed something and told him. It doesn’t matter.”

She nodded. “He asked me what language we used when we were together. I told him mostly English. His English isn’t so good, but he told me if he heard anything wrong, anything that sounded like a warning, he would feed me to the dog. He was listening right next to me. I was afraid if I tried to warn you, you might say something back and he would know what I had done. But I tried to tell you, in a way you wouldn’t notice or comment on right away. Did you notice?”

I nodded. “ ‘Would love to,” ’ I said, pronouncing it the way she had.

“Sim. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. I was too scared. He would have known.”

I smiled. “That was perfect,” I said. “It was good thinking. Obrigado.”

I was cradling my wrist in front of me and she looked at it. “What happened to your arm?” she asked.

“Murakami’s dog.”

“Jesus! Are you all right?”

I looked at my forearm. The leather jacket had kept the animal’s teeth from breaking the skin, but the area was purple and badly swollen and I thought something might be broken.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. “It’s you I’m worried about. There was a triple murder outside your building just now. As soon as someone finds one of the bodies, which isn’t going to be hard to do, the police are going to subpoena the security tapes from every building in the area. They’ll see you getting escorted by a guy with a white dog, the same white dog that’s getting cold now with its master a few meters from your building. You’re going to have a lot of questions to answer.”

She looked at me. “What should I do?”

“If you get picked up, tell the truth. You won’t want to mention that you opened the door just now-it’ll make you look complicit. But don’t deny that someone came up here and tried to get in. They’re going to see me on the security tapes, although I was careful to hide my face.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“But the police aren’t your real problem. Your real problem is going to be the associates of the men who came here tonight. They’re going to come after you, either for revenge, or as a way to get to me, or both.”

The color drained away beneath her caramel skin. “He would have killed me tonight, wouldn’t he,” she said.

I nodded. “If I had shown up as he hoped, they would have killed me and then eliminated you as a potential witness and loose end. My not showing up made you less of a liability. In their minds, killing you became not worth the trouble. It’s that simple.”

“Meu deus,” she said, swallowing. She was pale.

“Pack a bag,” I said. “Do it quickly. Take a cab to Shinjuku or Shibuya, someplace where there are still people around. Get another cab there. Stay at a love hotel, someplace with automated check-in. Use cash, no credit cards. First thing in the morning, take a train to Nagoya or Osaka, someplace with a major airport. Get the first flight out. It doesn’t matter where it’s going. Once you’re out of the country, you’ll be safe. You can find your way home from there.”

“Home?”

I nodded. “Brazil.”

She was silent for a long moment. Then she took my good hand in both of hers. She looked at me. “Come with me,” she said.

Looking into those green eyes, I almost could have said yes. But I didn’t.

“Come with me,” she said again. “You’re in danger, too.”

And then, in that instant, I realized I’d created a new nexus, another Harry or Midori, that a determined pursuer like the Agency or Yamaoto might follow as a way of getting to me. And this one was heading straight to Brazil. Where Yamada-san, my alter ego, had planned to establish himself.

I think I smiled a little bit at the irony, the jokes fate likes to play, because she said, “What?”

I shook my head. “I can’t travel now. Even if I could, it would be too dangerous for you to try to travel with me. Just go. I’ll find a way to contact you in Salvador after you’re back there.”

“Will you really?”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause. Then she looked at me. “I don’t think you’ll really come. That’s okay. But contact me and tell me that. Don’t make me wait, not knowing. Don’t do that to me.”

I nodded, thinking of Midori, the way she had said, Let’s see how you like the uncertainty.

“I’ll contact you,” I said.

“I don’t know where I’ll be exactly, but you can contact me through my father. David Leonardo Nascimento. He’ll know how to find me.”

“Go,” I said. “You don’t have much time.”

I turned to leave, but she caught me and stepped in close. She put her hands on my face and kissed me hard. “I’ll be waiting,” she said.

22

I MADE MY way out of the area on foot. I didn’t want to be seen, not even by an anonymous taxi driver.

I cleaned myself up in an all-night sauna, then stopped at a twenty-four-hour drugstore and bought a bottle of ibuprofen. I ate a half-dozen dry. My arm was throbbing.

Finally, I found a business hotel in Shibuya and collapsed into comalike sleep.

The sound of my pager awoke me. I heard it in my dreams as an automated garage door, then as a vibrating cell phone, then finally in the wakeful world for what it was.

I checked the readout. Tatsu. About fucking time. I went out, found a pay phone, and called him. It was already midday.

“Are you all right?” he asked me.

He must have heard about the carnage. “Never a cop around when you need one,” I told him.

“Forgive me for that.”

“If I’d gotten killed, I wouldn’t have. Under the circumstances, though, I feel magnanimous. I could use a doctor for an injured arm.”

“I’ll find someone. Can you meet me right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Where we parted last time.”

“Okay.”

I hung up.

I did an SDR that took me to Meguro station. Tatsu and Kanezaki were standing by the wickets.

Oh good, I thought. I needed a surprise.

I walked over. Tatsu pulled me aside.

“The theory is that there is a gang war under way,” he said to me. “An internal yakuza conflict. It will blow over.”

I looked at him. “You’ve heard, then.”

He nodded.

“Well?” I said. “Didn’t your parents teach you to say thank you?”

His face broke into a surprised grin and he actually patted me on the back. “Thank you,” he said. He looked at my arm, which I was cradling unnaturally close to my body. “I know someone who can take a look at that. But I think you’ll want to hear Kanezaki first.”

The three of us walked across the street to a coffee shop. As soon as we were seated and had ordered, Kanezaki said, “I learned something about your friend’s death. It’s not much, but you helped me out the way you promised, so I’ll tell you.”

“All right,” I said.

Kanezaki glanced at Tatsu. “Uh, Ishikura-san here briefed me on your meetings with Biddle and Tanaka. He told me that Biddle asked you to kill me.” He paused for a second. “Thanks for not taking him up on that,” he said.

“Doitashimashite,” I said, shaking my head slowly. Don’t mention it.

“After the last time we met,” he went on, “I wanted more information. For leverage over Biddle, to make sure he knew I had something on him in case he decided to try anything again.”

Fast learner, I thought. “What did you do?”

“I bugged his office.”

I looked at him, half-surprised, half-impressed by his apparent audacity. “You bugged the Chief of Station’s office?”

He smiled in a young, self-satisfied way that reminded me for a moment of Harry. “I did. His office is only swept for bugs every twenty-four hours, at regular intervals. Back at Headquarters I took the locks and picks course, so getting into his office to place the bug was no problem.”

“Impressive security,” I said.

He shrugged. “Security is generally effective against outside threats. But it wasn’t designed with inside threats in mind. Anyway, I can get in and out pretty much as I need to, putting the bug down to listen in, then removing it to avoid the sweeps.”

“You overheard something about Harry,” I said.

He nodded. “Yesterday, the Chief was on the phone with someone. I could only hear his half of the conversation, but I know he was talking to someone big, because it was ‘yes sir’ this and ‘no sir’ that.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Don’t worry. The thread we were following to try to contact Rain has been cut. No loose ends.” ’

“That’s not much.”

He shrugged. “To me it sounded like an acknowledgment that your friend’s death wasn’t an accident, that he was killed.”

I looked at him, and what he saw in my eyes made him blink. “Kanezaki,” I said, “if you feed me even the smallest bit of bullshit as a way of manipulating me into acting against your boss, it’ll be the worst mistake you ever made.”

He lost a bit of color, but other than that kept his cool. “I understand that. I’m not bullshitting you or trying to manipulate you. I told you before I’d tell you what I knew about your friend if you helped me, and you helped me. I’m just following through.”

I kept my eyes on him. “Nothing more about who ‘cut the thread’?”

He shook his head. “Nothing explicit. But the thrust of the conversation was about Yamaoto, so I think we can infer.”

“All right, infer.”

Tatsu broke in. “It seems that Biddle’s relationship with Yamaoto is not what I believed it to be. In certain critical ways they appear to be collaborators, not antagonists.”

“What does this have to do with Harry?” I asked.

“One of the things I overheard,” Kanezaki said, “is that Biddle plans to give the receipts to Yamaoto.”

The waiter brought our coffee and departed.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “I thought we all agreed that the USG wants to help Japan reform, while to Yamaoto reform is a mortal threat.”

“That’s true,” Kanezaki said.

“But now you think they’re working together.”

“From what I overheard, yes.”

“If that’s true, then Biddle might have been involved in Harry’s death. But why?”

“I’m not sure.”

I looked at Tatsu. “If the Agency is working with Yamaoto, it can only be to fuck your reformers. And now Biddle has all those receipts.”

Tatsu nodded. “We need to get them back. Before he turns them over to Yamaoto.”

“But it’s not just the receipts,” I said. “From what Tanaka told us, you’ve got to assume that several of Kanezaki’s meetings have been caught on videotape, with audio intercepted by parabolic mikes. What are you going to do about all that?”

“Nothing can be done,” Tatsu said. “As we discussed, any politician thus caught meeting with a CIA case officer is compromised. But the ones implicated only by virtue of the receipts can still be saved.”

“How?”

“A small percentage of politicians will be compromised both by the receipts and the photos. Doubtless Yamaoto plans to burn these unfortunates first. Then, during the ensuing media frenzy, he will release the balance of the receipts. The fact that there is no ‘hard’ video or audio evidence backing this second wave of revelations will be lost on the public.”

“So even though Yamaoto might still be able to burn the group he’s got on tape…”

“His efforts will be limited to that group. By reacquiring the receipts, we can contain the damage.”

“Okay. How are you going to get the receipts?”

“They’re in Biddle’s safe,” Kanezaki said. “I heard him say so on the phone.”

“It sounds like you can pick a lock, kid,” I said, “but cracking a safe is another story.”

“He won’t need to crack it,” Tatsu said. “Biddle will give him the combination.”

“What, are you going to just ask him nicely?”

Tatsu shook his head. “I thought it might be better if you would.”

I considered for a moment. I wanted another chance to question Biddle about Harry, in more private surroundings than were available last time. Especially if it was true that he and Yamaoto were somehow aligned, which increased the probability that he might have been involved in Harry’s death. Murakami and Yukiko were taken care of, but now it looked like there was still a little something I needed to wrap up.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

“I can help you set it up-” Kanezaki started to say.

“No,” I said, shaking my head, already picturing how I would handle it. “I can take care of that myself. You just make sure you have access to Biddle’s office when I tell you to.”

“Okay,” he said.

I looked at him. “Why are you doing all this? If the CIA finds out, they’ll call you a traitor.”

He laughed. “It’s hard to be scared of something like that immediately after finding out that your boss has been trying to hire someone to have you killed. Besides, Crepuscular was officially shut down, remember? As far as I’m concerned, Biddle is the traitor. I’m just trying to straighten things out.”

Tatsu took me to a doctor he knew, a guy named Eto. Tatsu told me he had done this guy a favor many years earlier, that as a result he was in Tatsu’s debt and could be counted on for his discretion.

Eto didn’t ask any questions. He examined my arm and told me I had a fractured ulna. He set it, put a cast on it, and gave me a prescription for a codeine-based painkiller. The prescription was written on generic Jikei Hospital stationery. I looked at the signature and saw that it was illegible. No one would be able to trace it back to him.

I called Biddle afterward. Told him I was ready to take him up on his offer about Kanezaki. Arranged a meeting for ten o’clock that night to discuss details.

I went to another spy shop in Shinjuku. This time I bought a pair of high-resolution night-vision goggles with a binocular magnification function. I also picked up another ASP baton. I’d developed a certain fondness for the things.

Next I stopped at a sporting goods store and bought a pair of sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt, both in a flat black heavy cotton, and a pair of jogging shoes. It was hard to find the right footwear-almost everything the store had was multicolored and gaudy-but eventually I came upon a pair that was suitably dark. After I left the store I cut off the reflective strips that the manufacturer had thoughtfully placed across the heels to make joggers more visible at night. Getting hit by a car that might fail to see me wasn’t my primary concern.

I had told Biddle that he should enter the Aoyama Bochi cemetery complex on Kayanoki-dori, from the Omotesando-dori entrance. That he should walk down the path about fifty meters, at which point he would see a tall obelisk on the left, the tallest structure in the cemetery. That he should wait there.

At eight o’clock, when it was sufficiently dark, I slipped into the cemetery from the Gaiennishi-dori side, avoiding the regular entrances just in case anyone was prepositioned and waiting for me. An odd place for a jog, but not unheard of. As soon as I was inside, I pulled on the goggles. I could make out every marker and bush in bright green. I saw bats sailing among the trees, a cat slinking from behind a stone.

I set up near the obelisk, inside a memorial shaped like a triple pagoda. The pagoda offered me excellent concealment and a three-hundred-sixty-degree vantage point.

Biddle showed up at ten sharp. He was as punctual about spycraft as he was about his tea.

I watched him make his way to the obelisk. He was wearing an open trench coat, a suit and tie beneath it. Very cloak and dagger. For ten minutes I scanned the perimeter of the cemetery, using the goggles as night-vision binoculars, until I was satisfied he was alone. Then I eased out and made my way to where he was standing.

He didn’t hear me until I spoke from a meter away. “Biddle,” I said.

“Jesus!” he said, jumping and spinning to face me.

I could see him squinting in the darkness. In the white/green of the goggles, I logged every detail of his expression.

Harry’s detector was motionless in my pocket. With my good arm, I slipped the baton out from one of the sweatpants pockets. Biddle missed the movement in the dark.

“There’s a small problem,” I said.

“What?”

“I need you to do a better job convincing me that you had nothing to do with Haruyoshi Fukasawa’s death.”

I saw his brow furrow in the green glow. “Look, I already told you…,” he started to say.

I snapped the baton out and backhanded it into his forward shin, holding back a little at the end because it was too soon to break anything. He shrieked and fell to the ground, clutching his wounded leg. I gave him a minute to roll around while I scanned the area. Except for Biddle, all was silent.

“No more noise,” I told him. “Stay quiet, or I’ll make you quiet.”

He gritted his teeth and looked to where my voice had come from. “Goddamn it, I’ve told you everything I know,” he said, gasping.

“You didn’t tell me you’re working with Yamaoto. That the one who’s been keeping Crepuscular alive is you, not Kanezaki.”

His eyes were wide, searching for me in the darkness. “Kanezaki is paying you, isn’t he?” he groaned.

I considered for a moment. “No. No one’s paying me. For once, I’m doing something just because I want to. Although I wouldn’t call that good news, from your perspective.”

“Well, I can pay you. The Agency can. It’s a new world we’re in, and I told you we want you to be a part of it.”

I chuckled. “You sound like a recruiting billboard. Now tell me about Yamaoto.”

“I’m serious. Post Nine-Eleven, the Agency needs people like you. This is why we’ve been looking for you.”

“I’m going to ask my question again. For free. If I have to repeat myself after this, though, the shot that just put you on the ground is going to seem like a caress.”

There was a long pause, then he said, “All right.” He got slowly to his feet, keeping his weight off his injured leg. “Look, Yamaoto has his interests, and we have ours. There’s just an alignment right now, that’s all. An alliance of convenience.”

“To what end? I thought Crepuscular was supposed to help reformers here.”

He nodded. “Reform would be good for the U.S. in the long term, but it would also create problems. Look, Japan is the world’s largest creditor. It has over three hundred billion dollars invested in U.S. treasury bills alone. In the short term, real reform would mean Japanese bank closings, bank closings would mean bank runs, and bank runs would force banks to repatriate their overseas capital to cover fleeing depositors. If reforms eventually work, though, and the economy improves, yen-based holdings will become more attractive, and Japanese banks will move their dollar-and Euro-based holdings home, where they might earn a better return.”

He had pulled himself together pretty nicely. Maybe I hadn’t been giving him enough credit.

“So whoever’s calling the shots in the USG right now prefers the status quo,” I said.

“We like to refer to it as ‘stability,” ’ he said, putting some weight on his injured leg and wincing.

I scanned the area around us. All quiet. “Because the status quo keeps all those trillions of yen safely parked in the U.S., where they prop up the American economy.”

“That’s right. To put it crudely, America is addicted to a continuing influx of foreign capital to support its deficit spending, and it gets the balance of its fix from Japan. There are elements in the USG that don’t want that to change.”

I shook my head. “That’s not crude, it’s nicely put. America is addicted to cheap oil, and props up brutal regimes in the Middle East to feed its habit. If the USG is supporting corrupt elements in Japan because those elements guarantee continued access to Japanese capital, Uncle Sam is just being consistent.”

“I suppose that’s not unfair. But I don’t make policy. I just carry it out.”

“So this is why Crepuscular was shut down six months ago,” I said. “Some newly ascendant faction in the USG decided that it wasn’t in Uncle Sam’s interest to further reform in Japan after all.”

“The opposite,” he said. He started to put his hands in his trench coat pockets.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” I said sharply.

He jumped. “Sorry, I’m just a little cold. How can you see anything, anyway? It’s pitch dark out here.”

“What do you mean, ‘the opposite’?”

“Crepuscular was never intended to further reform. It was conceived as a way of suborning reformers from the beginning. Whoever ordered its termination was a supporter of reform. But certainly not a realist.”

“You would be one of the realists, then.”

He straightened slightly. “That’s right. Along with some of the institutions that make U.S. foreign policy. The ones without blinders or the pressure of political constituencies. Look, the politicians press Japan to reform because they don’t understand what’s really going on. And what’s really going on is that Japan is past reform. Maybe ten, even five years ago, it could have been done. But not anymore. Things have gone too far here. The politicians in America are always talking about ‘biting the bullet’ and ‘strong medicine,’ but they don’t understand that if you try to bite this bullet, it’ll go through your head. That the patient is so weak, an operation would kill him. We’re past hope of a cure, it’s time to move into more of a pain-management approach.”

“It’s a moving story, Dr. Kevorkian. But I’m ready to hear the end.”

“The end?”

“Yes. The part that goes, ‘Here’s the combination to my safe.” ’

“The combination… oh no. No, no, no,” he said, alarm creeping into his voice. “How did he talk you into this? What did he tell you-those reformers are heroes? For God’s sake, they’re just like all the other politicians in this damn country, they’re just as selfish and venal. Kanezaki doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

I shot the baton into his wounded leg again. He screamed and went down.

“Quiet,” I said. “Or I’ll do the same to your arms.”

He clenched his teeth and rocked on his back, one arm holding his leg, the other arm jerking left to right in front of his head in a vain attempt to ward off the next attack.

“I warned you about making me ask you something twice,” I said. “Now spit it out. Or they won’t even be able to use dental records to ID you.”

I saw his jaw working in the green glow. He groaned and clutched his leg. Finally he said, “Thirty-two twice left, four once right, twelve left.”

I took out the cell phone and speed-dialed Kanezaki. “Hello?” I heard him say.

I repeated the number.

“Hold on.” A few seconds passed. “I’m in,” I heard him say.

“You find what you were looking for?”

I heard papers rustling. “Big time,” he said.

I clicked off.

“There’s a marker about a meter to your right,” I told him. “You can use it to stand.”

He pulled himself in the right direction and got slowly to his feet, using the marker to support himself. He slumped against it, panting, his face slicked with sweat.

“You knew they were going to do Harry,” I said. “Didn’t you.”

I saw him shake his head. “No.”

“But you suspected.”

“I suspect everything. I’m paid to suspect. That’s not the same as knowing.”

“Why did you ask me to kill Kanezaki?”

“I think you know,” he said, his breathing getting a little more even. “If those receipts were used, someone would have to be blamed for it. It would be best if that person weren’t in a position to tell his side of the story.”

“Is he still in any danger?”

He chuckled ruefully. “Not if those receipts are no longer in play, no.”

“You don’t seem too upset.”

He shrugged. “I’m a professional. None of this is personal for me. I hope the same goes for you.”

“What happens to Crepuscular?”

He sighed and looked a little wistful. “Crepuscular? It’s gone. It was shut down six months ago.”

He was already reciting the official story. No wonder he’d recovered his serenity so quickly. He knew he wasn’t going to face any personal-meaning career-repercussions.

I looked at him for a long time. I thought of Harry, of Tatsu, most of all of Midori. Finally I said, “I’m going to let you leave here, Biddle. The smart thing would be to kill you, but I won’t. That means you owe me. If you repay that debt by trying to get back into my life, I’ll find you.”

“I believe you,” he said.

“When we walk out of here tonight, we walk away-agreed?”

“We still need you,” he said. “There’s still a place for you.”

I waited for a moment in the darkness. He realized that he hadn’t answered my question. I saw him flinch.

“Agreed,” he said, his voice low.

I turned and left. He could find his own way out.

I met Tatsu the next day, on a sunny boulevard beneath a maple tree in Yoyogi Park. I briefed him on what I’d learned from Biddle.

“Kanezaki recovered the receipts,” he told me. “And promptly destroyed them. It’s as though they never existed. After all, Crepuscular was discontinued six months ago.”

“That kid is naïve, but he’s got balls,” I said.

Tatsu nodded, his eyes momentarily melancholy. “He has a good heart.”

I smiled. It wouldn’t be like Tatsu to admit that someone might have a good head.

“I have a feeling you haven’t seen the last of him,” I said.

He shrugged. “I would hope not. Getting those receipts back was lucky. But I have much more to do.”

“You can only do so much, Tatsu. Remember that.”

“But still we must do something, ne? Don’t forget, modern Japan was born of samurai from the southern provinces seizing the imperial palace in Kyoto and declaring the restoration of the Meiji emperor. Perhaps something like that could happen again. Perhaps a rebirth of democracy.”

“Perhaps,” I said.

He turned to me. “What will you do, Rain-san?”

I looked out at the trees. “I’m thinking about that.”

“Work with me.”

“You’re a broken record, Tatsu.”

“You sound like my wife again.”

I laughed.

“How does it feel, to have been part of something larger than yourself?” he asked.

I held up my taped and plastered arm. “Like this,” I said.

He smiled his sad smile. “That only means you are alive.”

I shrugged. “I admit it beats the alternatives.”

“If you need anything, ever, call me,” he said.

I stood. He followed suit.

We bowed and shook hands. I walked away.

I walked for a long time. East, toward Tokyo station, toward the bullet train that would take me back to Osaka. Tatsu knew where to find me there, but I could live with that for the time being.

I wondered what I would do when I got there. Yamada, my alter ego, was nearly ready to move. But I no longer knew where to send him.

I needed to contact Naomi. I wanted to contact her. I just didn’t know what I was going to say.

Yamaoto was still out there. Tatsu had dealt him a few solid blows, but he was still standing. Probably still looking for me. And maybe the Agency with him.

As I walked, the sky grew darker. A wind shook the branches of the city’s pollution-inured trees.

Tatsu had been upbeat. I wondered what deep wellspring fed his optimism. I wished I could share it. But I was too aware of Harry in the ground, of Midori gone for good, of Naomi waiting for an uncertain answer.

Fat droplets of rain started splattering against the city’s concrete skin, against the glass windows of its eyes. A few people with umbrellas opened them. The rest ran for cover.

I walked on, through it all. I tried to think of it as a baptism, a new beginning.

Maybe it was. But what a lonely resurrection.