Rainfall

PART TWO

When your sword meets that of your enemy, you can never waver, but must instead attack with the complete resolution of your whole body . . .

— MIYAMOTO MUSASHI, A Book of Five Rings

14

THE NEXT MORNING I was sitting with my back to the wall at my favorite vantage point in Las Chicas, waiting for Franklin Bulfinch to show himself.

It was a crisp, sunny morning, and between the bright light streaming through the windows and the overall hip atmosphere on which Las Chicas prides itself, I felt comfortable in my light-disguise knockoff Oakley shades, which I had picked up en route.

Midori was safely ensconced in the music section of the nearby Spiral Building on Aoyama-dori, close enough to meet Bulfinch quickly if necessary but far enough to be safe if things got hairy. She had called Bulfinch less than an hour earlier to arrange things. Most likely he was a legitimate reporter and would come to the meeting alone, but I saw no advantage in giving him time to deploy additional forces if I was mistaken.

Bulfinch was easy to spot as he approached the restaurant, the same tall, thin guy in wireless glasses I had seen on the train. He had a long stride and an erect, confident posture, and again struck me as having an aristocratic air. He was wearing jeans and tennis shoes, dressed up with a blue blazer. He crossed the patio and stepped inside the restaurant proper, pausing to look right, then left, searching for Midori. His eyes passed over me without recognition.

He wandered back in the direction of the rest room, presumably checking the separate dining space in the back of the building. I knew he’d be back in a moment, and used the time to watch the street a little longer. He’d been followed at Alfie, and it was possible that he was being followed now.

The street was still empty when Bulfinch returned to the front of the restaurant a minute later. His eyes swept the space again. When they were pointed in my direction, I said quietly, “Mr. Bulfinch.”

He looked at me for a second before saying, “Do I know you?”

“I’m a friend of Midori Kawamura. She asked me to come in her stead.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s in some danger right now. She needs to take care in her movements.”

“Is she coming here?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether I decide that it’s safe.”

“Who are you?”

“As I said, a friend, interested in the same thing you are.”

“Which is?”

I looked at him through my shades. “The disk.”

He paused before saying, “I don’t know about a disk.”

Right. “You were expecting Midori’s father to deliver you a disk when he died on the Yamanote three weeks ago. He didn’t have it with him, so you followed up with Midori after her performance at Alfie the following Friday. You met her in the Starbucks on Gaienhigashi-dori, near Almond in Roppongi. That’s where you told her about the disk, because you hoped she might have it. You wouldn’t tell her what’s on the disk because you were afraid doing so would compromise her. Although you had already compromised her by showing up at Alfie, because you were followed. All of which will be sufficient, I hope, to establish my bona fides.”

He made no move to sit. “You could have learned most of that without Midori telling you, and filled in the gaps by educated guessing — especially if you were the one following me.”

I shrugged. “And then I imitated her voice and called you an hour ago?”

He hesitated, then walked over and sat, his back straight and his hands on the table. “All right. What can you tell me?”

“I was going to ask you the same question.”

“Look, I’m a reporter. I write stories. Do you have information for me?”

“I need to know what’s on that disk.”

“You keep talking about a disk.”

“Mr. Bulfinch,” I said, focusing for an instant on the street, which was still empty, “the people who want that disk think that Midori has it, and they are more than willing to kill her to retrieve it. Your meeting her at Alfie while you were being watched is probably what put her in the danger she’s in. So let’s stop fucking around, okay?”

He took off his glasses and sighed. “Assuming for a moment there is a disk, I don’t see how knowledge of what’s on it would help Midori.”

“You’re a reporter. I assume you would be interested in publishing the hypothetical disk’s contents?”

“You could assume that, yes.”

“And I would also assume that certain people would want to prevent that publication?”

“That would also be a safe assumption.”

“Okay, then. It’s the threat of publication that’s making these people target Midori. Once the contents of the disk are published, Midori would no longer be a threat, is that right?”

“What you’re saying makes sense.”

“Then it seems we want the same thing. We both want the contents of the disk published.”

He shifted in his seat. “I see your point. But I’m not going to be comfortable talking about this unless I see Midori.”

I considered for a moment. “Are you carrying a cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“Show it to me.”

He reached into the left side of the blazer and withdrew a small flip-top unit.

“That’s fine,” I said. “Go ahead and put it back in your pocket.” As he did so, I pulled out a pen and small sheet of paper from my own jacket pocket and started jotting down instructions. My gut told me he wasn’t wired, but no one’s gut is infallible.

“Until I say otherwise, under no circumstances do I want to see you reaching for that phone,” my note read. “We’ll walk out of the restaurant together. When we step outside, stop so I can pat you down for weapons. After that, go where I motion you to go. At some point I’ll let you know that I want you to start walking ahead, and at some point I’ll tell you where we’re going. If you have questions now, write them down. If you don’t, just hand back this note. Starting now, do not say a word unless I speak first.”

I extended the note to him. He took it with one hand while slipping on his glasses with the other. When he was done reading, he pushed it across the table to me and nodded.

I folded the note up and put it back in my jacket pocket, followed by the pen. Then I placed a thousand-yen note on the table to cover the coffee I had been drinking and motioned him to leave.

We got up and walked outside. I patted him down and was unsurprised to find that he was clean. As we moved down the street I was careful to keep him slightly in front of me and to the side, a human shield if it came to that. I knew every good spot in the area for surveillance or an ambush, and my head swept back and forth, looking for someone out of place, someone who might have followed Bulfinch to the restaurant and then set up to wait outside it.

As we walked I called out “left” or “right” from behind him by way of directions, and we made our way to the Spiral Building. We walked through the glass doors and into the music section, where Midori was waiting.

“Kawamura-san,” he said, bowing, when he saw her. “Thank you for your call.”

“Thank you for coming to meet me,” Midori replied. “I’m afraid I wasn’t completely candid with you when we met for coffee. I’m not as ignorant of my father’s affiliations as I led you to believe. But I don’t know anything about the disk you mentioned. No more than you told me, anyway.”

“I’m not sure what I can do for you, then,” he said.

“Tell us what’s on the disk,” I replied.

“I don’t see how that would help you.”

“I don’t see how it could hurt us,” I answered. “Right now we’re running blind. If we put our heads together, we’ve got a much better chance of retrieving the disk than we do if we work separately.”

“Please, Mr. Bulfinch,” Midori said. “I barely escaped being killed a few days ago by whoever is trying to find that disk. I need your help.”

Bulfinch grimaced and looked at Midori and then at me, his eyes sweeping back and forth several times. “All right,” he said after a moment. “Two months ago your father contacted me. He told me he read my column for Forbes. He told me who he was and said he wanted to help. A classic whistle-blower.”

Midori turned to me. “That was about the time he was diagnosed.”

“I’m sorry?” Bulfinch asked.

“Lung cancer. He had just learned that he had little time to live,” Midori said.

Bulfinch nodded, understanding. “I see. I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

Midori bowed her head briefly, accepting his solicitude. “Please, go on.”

“Over the course of the next month I had several clandestine meetings with your father, during which he briefed me extensively on corruption in the Construction Ministry and its role as broker between the Liberal Democratic Party and the yakuza. These briefings provided me with invaluable insight into the nature and extent of corruption in Japanese society. But I needed corroboration.”

“What corroboration?” I asked. “Can’t you just print it and attribute it to ‘a senior source in the Construction Ministry’?”

“Ordinarily, yes,” Bulfinch replied. “But there were two problems here. First, Kawamura’s position in the Ministry gave him unique access to the information he was providing me. If we had published the information, we might as well have used his name in the by-line.”

“And the second problem?” Midori asked.

“Impact,” Bulfinch answered. “We’ve already run a half dozen exposés on the kind of corruption Kawamura was involved in. The Japanese press resolutely refuses to pick them up. Why? Because the politicians and bureaucrats pass and interpret laws that can make or break domestic corporations. And the corporations provide over half the media’s advertising revenues. So if, for example, a newspaper runs an article that offends a politician, the politician calls his contacts at the relevant corporations, who pull their advertising from the newspaper and transfer it to a rival publication, and the offending paper goes bankrupt. You see?

“If you have a reporter investigate a story from outside the government-sponsored kisha news clubs, you get shut down. If you play ball, the money keeps rolling in, licit and illicit. No one here takes chances; everyone treats the truth like a contagious disease. Christ, Japan’s press is the most docile in the world.”

“But with proof . . . ?” I asked.

“Hard proof would change everything. The papers would be forced to cover the story or else reveal that they are nothing but tools of the government. And flushing the corrupt kingpins out into the open would weaken them and embolden the press. We could start a virtuous cycle that would lead to a change in Japanese politics the likes of which the country hasn’t seen since the Meiji restoration.”

“I think you may be overestimating the zeal of domestic media,” Midori said.

Bulfinch shook his head. “Not at all. I know some of these people well. They’re good reporters, they want to publish. But they’re realists, too.”

“The proof,” I said. “What was it?”

Bulfinch looked at me over the tops of his wireless glasses. “I don’t know exactly. Only that it’s hard evidence. Incontrovertible.”

“It sounds like that disk should go to the Keisatsucho, not the press,” Midori said, referring to Tatsu’s investigative organization.

“Your father wouldn’t have lasted a day if he’d handed that information over to the feds,” I said, saving Bulfinch the trouble.

“That’s right,” Bulfinch said. “Your father wasn’t the first person to try to blow the whistle on corruption. Ever hear of Honma Tadayo?”

Ah, yes, Honma-san. A sad story.

Midori shook her head.

“When Nippon Credit Bank went bankrupt in 1998,” Bulfinch went on, “at least thirty-six billion dollars, and probably much more, of its one-hundred-thirty-three-billion-dollar loan portfolio had gone bad. The bad loans were linked to the underworld, even to illegal payments to North Korea. To clean up the mess, a consortium of rescuers hired Honma Tadayo, the respected former director of the Bank of Japan. Honma-san became president of NCB in early September and started working through the bank’s books, trying to bring to light the full extent of its bad debts and understand where and why they had been extended in the first place.

“Honma lasted two weeks. He was found hanged in an Osaka hotel room, with notes addressed to his family, company, and others nearby. His body was quickly cremated, without an autopsy, and the Osaka police ruled the death a suicide without even conducting an investigation.

“And Honma wasn’t an isolated event. His death was the seventh ‘suicide’ among ranking Japanese either investigating financial irregularities or due to testify about irregularities since 1997, when the depth of bad loans affecting banks like Nippon Credit first started coming to light. There was also a member of parliament who was about to talk about irregular fund-raising activities, another Bank of Japan director who oversaw small financial institutions, an investigator at the Financial Supervision Agency, and the head of the small and medium financial institutions division at the Ministry of Finance. Not one of these seven cases resulted in so much as a homicide investigation. The powers that be in this country don’t allow it.”

I thought of Tatsu and his conspiracy theories, my eyes unblinking behind my shades.

“There are rumors of a special outfit within the yakuza,” Bulfinch said, taking off his glasses and wiping the lenses on his shirt, “specialists in ‘natural causes,’ who visit victims at night in hotel rooms, force them to write wills at gunpoint, inject them with sedatives, then strangle them in a way that makes it appear that the victim committed suicide by hanging.”

“Have you found any substance to the rumors?” I asked.

“Not yet. But where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

He held his glasses up above his head and examined them, then returned them to his face. “And I’ll tell you something else. As bad as the problems are in the banks, the Construction Ministry is worse. Construction is the biggest employer in Japan — it puts the rice on one out of every six Japanese tables. The industry is by far the biggest contributor to the LDP. If you want to dig this country’s corruption out by the roots, construction is the place to start. Your father was a brave man, Midori.”

“I know,” she said.

I wondered if she still assumed the heart attack had been from natural causes. The building was starting to feel warm.

“I’ve told you what I know,” Bulfinch said. “Now it’s your turn.”

I looked at him through the shades. “Can you think of any reason that Kawamura would have gone to meet you that morning but not brought the disk?”

Bulfinch paused before saying “No.”

“The plan that morning was definitely to do the handoff?”

“Yes. As I said, we’d had a number of previous deep background meetings. This was the morning Kawamura was going to deliver the goods.”

“Maybe he couldn’t get access to the disk, couldn’t download whatever he was going to download that day, and that’s why he was coming up empty-handed.”

“No. He told me over the phone the day before that he had it. All he had to do was hand it over.”

I felt a flash of insight. I turned to Midori. “Midori, where did your father live?” Of course I already knew, but couldn’t let her know that.

“Shibuya.”

“Which chome?” Chome are small subdivisions within Tokyo’s various wards.

“San-chome.”

“Top of Dogenzaka, then? Above the station?”

“Yes.”

I turned to Bulfinch. “Where was Kawamura getting on the train that morning?”

“Shibuya JR Station.”

“I’ve got a hunch I’m going to follow up on. I’ll call you if it pans out.”

“Wait just a minute . . . ,” he started to say.

“I know this isn’t comfortable for you,” I said, “but you’re going to have to trust me. I think I can find that disk.”

“How?”

“As I said, I’ve got a hunch.” I started to move toward the door.

“Wait,” he said again. “I’ll go with you.”

I shook my head. “I work alone.”

He took me by the arm and said again, “I’ll go with you.”

I looked at his hand on my arm. After a moment it drifted back to his side.

“I want you to walk out of here,” I told him. “Head in the direction of Omotesando-dori. I’m going to get Midori someplace safe and follow up on my hunch. I’ll be in touch.”

He looked at Midori, clearly at a loss.

“It’s all right,” she said. “We want the same thing you do.”

“I don’t suppose I have much choice,” he said, looking at me with a glare that was meant to convey resentment. But I saw what he was really thinking.

“Mr. Bulfinch,” I said, my voice low, “don’t try to follow me. I would spot you if you did. I would not react as a friend.”

“For Christ’s sake, tell me what you’re thinking. I might be able to help.”

“Remember,” I said, gesturing to the street, “the direction of Omotesando-dori. I’ll be in touch soon.”

“You’d better be,” he said. He took a step closer and looked through the shades and into my eyes, and I had to admire his balls. “You just better.” He gave a nod to Midori and walked through the glass doors of the Spiral Building and out onto the street.

Midori looked at me and asked, “What’s your hunch?”

“Later,” I said, watching him through the glass. “We need to move now, before he gets a chance to double back and follow one of us. Let’s go.”

We walked out and immediately flagged a cab heading in the direction of Shibuya. I could see Bulfinch, still walking in the other direction, as we got in and drove away.

We got out and separated at Shibuya JR Station. Midori headed back to the hotel while I made my way up Dogenzaka — where Harry and I had followed Kawamura that morning that now seemed like so long ago, where, if my hunch was right, Kawamura had ditched the disk the morning he died.

I was thinking about Kawamura, about his behavior that morning, about what must have been going on in his mind.

More than anything else he’s scared. Today’s the day; he’s got the disk that’s going to flush all the rats out in the open. It’s right there in his pocket. It’s small and almost weightless, of course, but he’s intensely aware of its presence, this object that he knows will cost him his few remaining days if he’s caught with it. In less than an hour he’ll meet Bulfinch and unload the damn thing, and thank God for that.

What if I’m being followed right now? he would think. What if they find me with the disk? He starts looking over his shoulder. Stops to light a cigarette, turns and scans the street.

Someone behind him looks suspicious. Why not? When you’re hopped up on fear, the whole world is transformed. A tree looks like an NVA regular down to the details — the dark uniform, the Kalishnikov. Every guy in a suit looks like the government assassin who’s going to reach into your pocket, take out the disk, and smile as he raises the gun to your forehead.

Get rid of the damn thing, and let Bulfinch retrieve it himself. Anywhere, anywhere at all . . . there, the Higashimura fruit store, that’ll do.

I stopped outside the store’s small door and looked at the sign over it. This was where he had ducked into that morning. If it wasn’t here, it could be anywhere. But if he had unloaded it on his way to see Bulfinch, this was the place.

I walked in. The proprietor, a short man with defeated-looking eyes and skin the hue of a lifetime of tobacco, looked up and acknowledged me with a tired “irrashaimase,” then went back to reading his manga. The store was small and rectangular, and the proprietor had a view of the whole place. Kawamura would have been able to hide the disk only in places where a patron could acceptably put his hands. He would be moving quickly, too. As far as he was concerned, it would only need to stay hidden for an hour or so, anyway, so he didn’t have to find an incredibly secure spot.

Which meant it was probably already gone, I realized. It wouldn’t still be here. But I had nothing else to go on. It was worth a try.

Apples. I had seen an apple rolling out of the train car as the doors had closed.

There was a selection of Fujis, polished and beautiful in their netted Styrofoam half blankets, at the farthest corner of the store. I imagined Kawamura strolling over, examining the apples, slipping the disk under them as he did so.

I walked over and looked. The bin was only a few apples deep, and it was easy for me to search for the disk simply by moving around the apples, as though I was trying to select just the right one.

No disk. Shit.

I repeated the drill with the adjacent pears, then the tangerines. Nothing.

Damn it. It had felt right. I had been so sure.

I was going to have to buy something to complete the charade. I was obviously a discriminating buyer, looking for something special.

“Could you put together a small selection as a gift?” I asked the owner. “Maybe a half dozen pieces of fruit, including a small musk melon.”

“Kashikomarimashita,” he answered with a wan attempt at a smile. Right away.

As he went about carefully assembling the gift, I continued my search. In the five minutes during which the proprietor was preoccupied with my request, I was able to check every place to which Kawamura would have had access that morning. It was useless.

The proprietor was just about finished. He pulled out a green moiré ribbon and wrapped it twice around the box he had used, finishing it in a simple bow. It was actually a nice gift. Maybe Midori would enjoy it.

I took out some bills and handed them over. What were you hoping for, anyway? I thought. Kawamura wouldn’t have had time to hide it well. Even if he tried to ditch it in here, someone would have found it by now.

Someone would have found it.

He was counting out my change with the same slow approach that he had employed in creating the fruit basket. Definitely a careful man. Methodical.

I waited for him to finish, then said in Japanese, “Excuse me. I know it’s not likely, but a friend of mine lost a CD in here a week or so ago and asked me to check to see if anyone had found it. It’s so unlikely that I hesitated to bring it up, but . . .”

“Un,” he grunted, kneeling down behind the counter. He stood up a moment later, a generic plastic jewel box in his hand. “I wondered whether anyone would claim this.” He wiped it off with a few listless strokes of his apron and handed it to me.

“Thank you,” I said, not a little bit surprised. “My friend will be happy.”

“Good for him,” he said, and his eyes filmed over again.

15

AT FIRST LIGHT the whole of Shibuya feels like a giant sleeping off a hangover. You can still sense the merriment, the heedless laughter of the night before, you can hear it echoed in the strange silences and deserted spaces of the area’s twisting backstreets. The drunken voices of karaoke revelers, the unctuous pitches of the club touts, the secret whispers of lovers walking arm in arm, all are departed, but somehow, for just a few evanescent hours in the quiet of early morning, their shadows linger, like ghosts who refuse to believe that the night has ended, that there are no more parties to attend.

I walked, in the company of those ghosts, following a series of alleys that more or less paralleled Meiji-dori, the main artery connecting Shibuya and Aoyama. I had gotten up early, easing out of the bed as quietly as I could to let Midori sleep. She had awakened anyway.

I had taken the disk to Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronics Mecca, where I tried to play it on a PC in one of the enormous, anonymous computer stores. No dice. It was encrypted.

Which meant that I needed Harry’s help. The realization wasn’t comfortable: given Bulfinch’s description of the disk’s contents — that it contained evidence of an assassin or assassins specializing in natural causes — I knew that what was on the disk could implicate me.

I called Harry from a pay phone in Nogizaka. He sounded groggy and I figured he’d been sleeping, but I could feel him become alert when I mentioned the construction work going on in Kokaigijidomae — our signal for an immediate, emergency meeting. I used our usual code to tell him that I wanted to meet at the Doutor coffee shop on Imoarai-zaka in Roppongi. It was near his apartment, so he would be able to get there fast.

He was already waiting when I arrived twenty minutes later, sitting at a table in back, reading a paper. His hair was matted down on one side of his head and he looked pale. “Sorry to get you up,” I said, sitting across from him.

He shook his head. “What happened to your face?”

“Hey, you should see the other guy. Let’s order some breakfast.”

“I think I’ll just have coffee.”

“You don’t want eggs or something?”

“No, just coffee is good.”

“Sounds like it was a rough night,” I said, imagining what that would consist of for Harry.

He looked at me. “You’re scaring me with the small talk. I know you wouldn’t have used the code unless it was something serious.”

“You wouldn’t forgive me for getting you up otherwise,” I said.

We ordered coffee and breakfast and I filled him in on everything that had happened since the last time I saw him, beginning with how I met Midori, through the attack outside her apartment and then mine, the meeting with Bulfinch, the disk. I didn’t tell him about the previous night. I just told him we were using a love hotel as a safe house.

Looking at him there, feeling his concern, I realized I trusted him. Not just because I knew that, operationally, he had no way to hurt me, which was my usual reason for extending some minimal measure of trust, but because he was worthy of trust. And because I wanted to trust him.

“I’m in a bit of a tight spot here,” I told him. “I could use your help. But . . . you’re going to need to know some fairly deep background first. If that’s not comfortable for you, all you need to do is say so.”

He reddened slightly, and I knew that it would mean a lot to him that I would ask for his help, that I needed him. “It’s comfortable,” he said.

I told him about Holtzer and Benny, the apparent CIA connection.

“I wish you’d told me earlier,” he said when I was done. “I might have been able to do more to help.”

I shrugged. “The less you know, the less I have to worry about you.”

He nodded. “Typical CIA outlook.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“No, no. Remember, I worked at the Puzzle Palace. It’s the Agency types who turn paranoia into a point of pride. Anyway, why would I want to hurt you?”

“Just being careful, kid,” I said. “It’s nothing personal.”

“You saved my butt that time in Roppongi, remember? You think I’d forget that?”

“You’d be surprised what people forget.”

“Not me. Anyway, has it occurred to you how much I’m trusting you by letting you share this information with me, letting you make me a potential point of vulnerability? I know how careful you are, and I know what you’re capable of.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” I said.

He looked at me for a long time before he responded. “I’ve kept your secrets for a long time. I’ll continue to keep them. Fair enough?”

Never underestimate Harry, I thought, nodding.

“Fair enough?” he asked again.

“Yes,” I said, not having anywhere else to go. “Now, enough of the I’m-okay-you’re-okay routine. Let’s work the problem. Start with Holtzer.”

“Tell me more about how you know him.”

“Not right after I’ve eaten.”

“That bad, huh?”

I shrugged. “I knew him in Vietnam. He was with the Agency then, attached to SOG, a joint CIA-military Special Operations Group. He’s got balls, I’ll give him credit for that. He wasn’t afraid to go into the field, unlike some of the other bean counters I worked with out there. I liked that about him when I first met him. But even then he was nothing but a careerist. The first time we locked horns was after an ARVN — Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the South’s army — operation in Military Region Three. The ARVN had mortared the shit out of a suspected Vietcong base in Tay Ninh, based on intelligence from a source that Holtzer had developed. So we were involved in the body count, as a way of verifying the intelligence.

“The ARVN had really pounded the place, and it was hard to identify the bodies — there were pieces everywhere. But there were no weapons. I told Holtzer this didn’t look like Vietcong activity to me. He says, What are you talking about? This is Tay Ninh, everyone here is Vietcong. I say, Come on, there aren’t any weapons, your source was jerking you off. There was a mistake. He says no mistake, there must be two dozen enemy dead. But he’s counting every blown-off limb as a separate body.

“Back at base, he writes up his report and asks me to verify it. I told him to fuck off. There were a couple officers nearby, out of earshot but close enough to see us. It got heated, and I wound up laying him out. The officers saw it, which is exactly what Holtzer had wanted, although I don’t think he bargained for the rhinoplasty he needed afterward. Ordinarily that kind of thing wouldn’t have aroused much attention, but at the time there was some sensitivity to the way Special Forces and the CIA were cooperating in the field, and Holtzer knew how to work the bureaucracy. He made it sound like I wouldn’t verify his report because I had a personal problem with him. I wonder how many subsequent S&D operations were based on intelligence from his so-called fucking source.”

I took a swallow of coffee. “He caused a lot of problems for me after that. He’s the kind of guy who knows just which ears to whisper in, and I’ve never been good at that game. When I got back from the war I had some kind of black cloud over me, and I always knew he was the one behind it, even if I couldn’t catch him pulling the strings.”

“You never told me about what happened in the States after the war,” Harry said after a moment. “Is that why you left?”

“Part of it.” The terseness of my reply was meant to indicate that I didn’t want to go there, and Harry understood.

“What about Benny?” he asked.

“All I know about him is that he was connected to the LDP — an errand boy, but trusted with some important errands. And that apparently he was also a mole for the CIA.”

The word mole felt unpleasant in my mouth. It is still one of the foulest epithets I know.

For six years, SOG’s operations in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam were compromised by a mole. Time and again, a team would be inserted successfully, only to be picked up within minutes by North Vietnamese patrols. Some of these missions had been death traps, with entire SOG platoons wiped out. But others were successful, which meant that the mole had limited access. If an investigator could have compared dates and access, we could have quickly narrowed down the list of suspects.

But MACV — the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam — refused to investigate due to sensitivities about “counterpart relationships” — that is, they were afraid of insulting the South Vietnamese government by suggesting that a South Vietnamese national attached to MACV might have been less than reliable. Worse, SOG was ordered to continue to share its data with the ARVN. We tried to get around the command by issuing false insert coordinates to our Vietnamese counterparts, but MACV found out and there was hell to pay.

In 1972, a traitorous ARVN corporal was uncovered, but this single, low-level agent couldn’t possibly have been the only source of damage for all those years. The real mole was never discovered.

I took Benny’s and the kendoka’s cell phones from my jacket pocket and handed them to Harry. “I need two things from you. Check out the numbers that have been called. They should be stored in the phones.” I showed him which unit had belonged to the kendoka, and which to Benny. “See if there are any numbers speed-dial programmed, too, and try chasing them all down with a reverse directory. I want to know who these guys were talking to, how they were connected to each other and to the Agency.”

“No problem,” he said. “I’ll get you something by the end of the day.”

“Good. Now the second thing.” I took out the disk and put it on the table. “What everybody is after is on this disk. Bulfinch says it’s an exposé on corruption in the LDP and the Construction Ministry that could bring down the government.”

He picked it up and held it up to the light.

“Why a disk?” he said.

“I was going to ask you the same question.”

“Don’t know. It would have been easier to move whatever’s on here over the Net. Maybe a copy management program prevented that. I’ll check it out.” He slipped it inside his jacket.

“Could that be how they knew we were on to Kawamura?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How they found out that he’d made the disk.”

“Could be. There are copy management programs that will tell you if a copy has been made.”

“It’s encrypted, too. I tried to run it but couldn’t. Why would Kawamura have encrypted it?”

“I doubt that he did. He probably wasn’t supposed to have access. Someone else would have encrypted it, whoever he took it from.”

That made sense. I still didn’t understand why Benny had put me on Kawamura weeks earlier, though. They must have had some other way of knowing that he had been talking to Bulfinch. Maybe telephone taps, something like that.

“Okay,” I said. “Page me when you’re done. We’ll meet back here — just input a time that’s good for you. Use the usual code.”

He nodded and got up to leave. “Harry,” I said. “Don’t be cocky now. There are people who, if they knew you had that disk, would kill you to get it back.”

He nodded. “I’ll be careful.”

“Careful’s not good enough. Be paranoid. You don’t trust anyone.”

“Almost anyone,” he said with a slightly exasperated pursing of the lips that might have been a grin.

“No one,” I said, thinking of Crazy Jake.

After he’d left I called Midori from a pay phone. We had switched to a new hotel that morning. She answered on the first ring.

“Just wanted to check in,” I told her.

“Can your friend help us?” she asked. I had told her to watch what she said over the phone, and she was choosing her words carefully.

“Too early to tell. He’s going to try.”

“When are you coming?”

“I’m on my way now.”

“Do me a favor, get me something to read. A novel, some magazines. I should have thought of it when I went out for something to eat before. There’s nothing to do in this room and I’m going crazy.”

“I’ll stop someplace on the way. See you in a little bit.”

Her tone was less strained than it had been when I first told her I had found the disk. She had wanted to know how, and I wouldn’t tell her. Obviously couldn’t.

“I was retained by a party that wanted it,” I finally said. “I didn’t know what was on it at the time. I obviously didn’t know the lengths they would go to in trying to get it.”

“Who was the party?” she had insisted.

“Doesn’t matter” was my response. “All you need to know is that I’m trying to be part of the solution now, okay? Look, if I wanted to give it to the party that paid me to find it, I wouldn’t be here with it right now, discussing it with you. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Not knowing my world, she had no reason to doubt that Kawamura’s heart attack had been due to something other than natural causes. If it had been anything other than that — a bullet, even a fall from a building — I knew I would be suspect.

I headed to Suidobashi, where I began a thorough SDR by catching the JR line to Shinjuku. I changed trains at Yoyogi and watched to see who got off with me, then waited on the platform after the train left. I let two trains pass at Yoyogi before I got back on, and one stop later I exited at the east end of Shinjuku Station, the older, teeming counterpart to sanitized, government-occupied west Shinjuku. I was still wearing sunglasses to hide my swollen eye, and the dark tint gave the frenzied crowds a slightly ghostly look. I let the mob carry me through one of the mazelike underground shopping arcades until I was outside the Virgin Megastore, then fought my way across the arcade to the Isetan Department Store, feeling like a man trying to ford a strong river. I decided to buy Midori an oversized navy cashmere scarf and a pair of sunglasses with wraparound lenses that I thought would change the shape of her face. Paid for them at different registers so no one would think the guy in the sunglasses was buying a neat disguise for the woman in his life.

Finally, I stopped at Kinokuniya, about fifty meters down from Isetan, where I plunged into crowds so thick they made the arcade seem desolate by comparison. I picked up a couple of magazines and a novel from the Japanese best-seller section and walked over to the register to pay.

I was waiting in line, watching to see who was emerging from the stairway and escalator, when my pager starting vibrating in my pocket. I reached down and pulled it out, expecting to see a code from Harry. Instead the display showed an eight-digit number with a Tokyo prefix.

I paid for the magazines and the book and took the stairs back to the first floor, then walked over to a pay phone on a side street near Shinjuku-dori. I inserted a hundred-yen coin and punched in the number, glancing over my shoulder while the connection went through.

I heard someone pick up on the other end. “John Rain,” a voice said in English. I didn’t respond at first, and the voice repeated my name.

“I think you’ve got the wrong number.”

There was a pause. “My name is Lincoln.”

“That’s cute.”

“The chief wants to meet with you.”

I understood then that the caller was with the Agency, that the chief was Holtzer. I waited to see if Lincoln was going to add something, but he didn’t. “You must be joking,” I said.

“I’m not. There’s been a mistake and he wants to explain. You can name the time and the place.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You need to hear what he has to say. Things aren’t what you think they are.”

I glanced back in the direction of Kinokuniya, weighing the risks and possible advantages.

“He’ll have to meet me right now,” I said.

“Impossible. He’s in a meeting. He can’t get free before tonight, at the earliest.”

“I don’t care if he’s having open-heart surgery. You tell him this, Abe. If he wants to meet me, I’ll be waiting for him in Shinjuku in twenty minutes. If he’s one minute late, I’m gone.”

There was a long pause. Then he asked, “Where in Shinjuku?”

“Tell him to walk out the east exit of Shinjuku JR Station directly toward the Studio Alta sign. And tell him that if he’s wearing anything besides pants, shoes, and a short-sleeved T-shirt, he’ll never see me. Okay?” I wanted to make it as hard as possible for Holtzer to conceal a readily accessible weapon, if that’s what he was planning to do.

“I understand.”

“Exactly twenty minutes,” I said, and hung up.

There were two possibilities. One, Holtzer might have something legitimate to say, the chances of which were remote. Two, this was just an attempt to reacquire me to finish the job they had botched outside my apartment. But either way, it was a chance for me to learn more. Not that I would count on Holtzer to be straight with me one way or the other, but I could read between the lines of his lies.

I had to assume there would be cameras. I’d keep him moving, but the risk would still be there. But what the hell, I thought. They know where you live, bastards have probably got a damn photo album by now. You don’t have a whole lot of anonymity to protect anymore.

I crossed back to Shinjuku-dori and walked to the front of the Studio Alta building, where several cabs were waiting for fares. I strolled over to one of the drivers, a younger guy who looked like he might be willing to overlook a strange situation if the price were right, and told him I wanted him to pick up a passenger who would be coming out the east exit in about fifteen or twenty minutes, a gaijin wearing a T-shirt.

“Ask if he’s the chief,” I explained in Japanese, handing him a ten-thousand-yen note. “If he answers yes, I want you to drive him down Shinjuku-dori, then make a left on Meiji-dori, then go left again on Yasukuni-dori. Wait for me on the north side of Yasukuni-dori in front of the Daiwa Bank. I’ll get there right after you do.” I pulled out another ten-thousand-yen note and tore it in two pieces. I gave half to him, told him he would get the other half when he picked me up. He bowed in agreement.

“Do you have a card?” I asked him.

“Hai,” he answered, and instantly produced a business card from his shirt pocket.

I took the card and thanked him, then walked around to the back of the Studio Alta building, where I took the stairs to the fifth floor. From there I had a good view of the east exit. I checked my watch: fourteen minutes to go. I wrote down an address in Ikebukuro on the back of the card and slipped it into my breast pocket.

Holtzer showed up one minute early. I watched him emerge from the east exit, then walk slowly toward the Studio Alta sign. Even from a distance I could recognize the fleshy lips, the prominent nose. For a brief, satisfying moment, I remembered breaking it. He still had all his hair, although now it was more steely gray than the dirty blond that I had known. I could tell from his carriage and build that he was keeping in shape. He looked cold in the short-sleeved shirt. Too bad.

I saw the cab driver approach him and say something. Holtzer nodded, then followed him to the cab, glancing left and right as they walked. He looked the cab over suspiciously before getting in, and then they moved off down Shinjuku-dori.

I hadn’t given Holtzer’s people time to set up a car or other mobile surveillance in the area, so anyone who was trying to keep up with him was going to have to scramble, most likely by hurrying to get a cab. I watched the area for four minutes, but there was no unusual activity. So far, so good.

I turned and headed back to the stairs, taking them three at a time until I got to the first floor. Then I cut across Yasukuni-dori to the Daiwa Bank, getting there just as the cab pulled up. I walked over to the passenger side, watching Holtzer’s hands as I approached. The automatic door opened, and Holtzer leaned toward me.

“John . . . ,” he started to say, in his reassuring voice.

“Hands, Holtzer,” I said, cutting him off. “Let me see your hands. Palms forward, up in the air.” I didn’t really think he was going to try to just shoot me, but I wasn’t going to give him the chance, either.

“I should ask the same thing of you.”

“Just do it.” He hesitated, then leaned back and raised his hands. “Now lace your fingers and put your hands on the back of your neck. Then turn around and look out the driver-side window.”

“Oh, come on, Rain. . . ,” he started to say.

“Do it. Or I’m gone.” He glared at me for a second and then complied.

I slid in next to him and gave the driver the business card with the Ikebukuro address, telling him to drive us there. It didn’t matter where he took us. I just didn’t want to say anything out loud. Then I squeezed Holtzer’s laced fingers together with my left hand while I patted him down with my right. After a minute I moved away from him, satisfied that he wasn’t carrying a weapon. But that was only half my worry.

“I hope you’re happy now,” he said. “Do you mind telling me where we’re going?”

I thought he might ask. “You wearing a wire, Holtzer?” I said, watching his eyes. He didn’t answer. Where would it be? I thought. I hadn’t felt anything under his shirt.

“Take off your belt,” I told him.

“Like hell, Rain. This is going too far.”

“Take it off, Holtzer. I’m not playing games with you. I’m about halfway to deciding that the way to solve all my problems is just to break your neck right here.”

“Go ahead and try.”

“Sayonara, asshole.” I leaned toward the driver. “Tomatte kudasai.” Stop here.

“Okay, okay, you win,” he said, raising his hands as if in surrender. “There’s a transmitter in the belt. It’s just a precaution. After Benny’s unfortunate accident.”

Was he telling me not to worry, that Benny didn’t even matter? “Iya, sumimasen,” I said to the driver. “Itte kudasai.” Sorry. Keep going.

“Good to see that you’ve still got the same high regard for your people,” I said to Holtzer. “Give me the belt.”

“Benny wasn’t my people,” he said, shaking his head at my obvious obtuseness. “He was fucking us just like he tried to fuck you.” He slipped off the belt and handed it to me. I held it up. Sure enough, there was a tiny microphone under the buckle.

“Where’s the battery?” I asked.

“The buckle is the battery. Nickel hydride.”

I nodded, impressed. “You guys do nice work.” I rolled down the window and pitched the belt out into the street.

He lunged for it, a second late. “Goddamnit, Rain, you didn’t have to do that. You could have just disabled it.”

“Let me see your shoes.”

“Not if you’re planning on throwing them out the window.”

“I will if they’re wired. Take them off.” He handed them over. They were black loafers — soft leather and rubber soles. No place for a microphone. The insides were warm and damp from perspiration, which indicated that he’d been wearing them for a while, and there were indentations from his toes. Obviously not something that the lab boys put together for a special occasion. I gave them back.

“All right?” he asked.

“Say what you’ve got to say,” I told him. “I don’t have much time.”

He sighed. “The incident outside your apartment was a mistake. It never should have happened, and I want to personally apologize.”

It was disgusting, how sincere he could sound. “I’m listening.”

“I’m going out on a limb here, Rain,” he said in a low voice. “What I’m about to tell you is classified . . .”

“It better be classified. If all you’ve got to tell me is what I can read in the paper, then you’re wasting my time.”

He scowled. “For the last five years, we’ve been developing an asset in the Japanese government. An insider, someone with access to everything. Someone who knows where all the bodies are buried — and I’m not just being figurative here.”

If he was hoping for a reaction, he didn’t get one, and he went on. “We’ve gotten more and more from this guy over time, but never anything that went beyond deep background. Never anything we could use as leverage. You following me?”

I nodded. Leverage in the business means blackmail.

“It’s like a Catholic schoolgirl, you know? She keeps saying no, you’ve just got to find another way, because hey, in the end, you know she wants it.” He grinned, the fleshy lips lurid. “Well, we kept at him, getting in deeper an inch at a time. Finally, six months ago, the nature of his refusals started to change. Instead of ‘No, I won’t do that,’ we started hearing, ‘No, that’s too dangerous, I’d be at risk.’ You know, practical objections.”

I did know. Good salesmen, good negotiators, and good intelligence officers all relish practical objections. They signal a shift from whether to how, from principle to price.

“It took us five more months to close him. We were going to give him a one-time cash payment big enough so he’d never have to worry again, plus an annual stipend. False papers, settlement in a tropical locale where he’d blend in — the Agency equivalent of the witness-protection program, but deluxe.

“In exchange, he was going to give us the goods on the Liberal Democratic Party — the payoffs, the bribery, the yakuza ties, the killings of whistle-blowers. And this is hard evidence we’re talking about: phone taps, photographs, tape-recorded conversations, the kind of stuff that would stand up in court.”

“What were you going to do with all that?”

“The fuck you think we were going to do with it? With that kind of information, the U.S. government would own the LDP. We’d have every Japanese pol in our pocket. Think we’d ever get any grief again about military bases on Okinawa or at Atsugi? Think we’d have any trouble exporting as much rice or as many semiconductors or cars as we wanted? The LDP is the power here, and we would have been the power behind the power. Japan would have been Uncle Sam’s favorite prison fuckboy for the rest of the century.”

“I gather from your tone that Uncle Sam has been disappointed in love,” I said.

His smile was more like a sneer. “Not disappointed. Just postponed. We’ll still get what we want.”

“What was your connection with Benny?”

“Poor Benny. He was a great source on LDP slime. He knew the players, but he didn’t have the access, you know? The asset had the access.”

“But you sent him to my apartment.”

“Yeah, we sent him. Alone, to question you.”

“How did you find out what happened to him?”

“C’mon Rain, the guy’s neck was snapped clean in half right outside your apartment. Who else would have done it, one of your neighbors on a pension? Besides, we had him wired for sound. SOP for this kind of thing. So we heard everything, heard him blaming me, the little prick.”

“And the other guy?”

“We don’t know anything about him, other than that he turned up dead a hundred meters from where the Tokyo police found Benny’s body.”

“Benny told me he was Boeicho Boeikyoku. That you handled the liaison.”

“He was right that I handled the Boeikyoku liaison, but he was full of shit that I knew his friend. Anyway, you can bet we did some checking, and Benny’s pal wasn’t with Japanese Intelligence. When Benny took him to your apartment, he was on a private mission, getting paid by someone else. You know you can’t trust these moles, Rain. You remember the problems we had with our ARVN counterparts in Vietnam?”

I looked up at the rearview and saw the driver looking at us, his face suspicious. The chances that he could follow our conversation in English were nil, but I could see that he sensed something was amiss, that it was unnerving him.

“They take money from you, they’ll take it from anyone,” he went on. “I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to miss Benny. You get paid by both sides, someone finds out, hey, you get what you had coming anyway.”

Or at least you should. “Right,” I said.

“But let me finish the part about the asset. Three weeks ago he’s on his way to deliver the information, downloaded to a disk, he’s actually carrying the fucking crown jewels, and — can you believe this? He has a heart attack on the Yamanote and dies. We send people to the hospital, but the disk is gone.”

“How can you be so sure he was carrying the disk when he died?”

“Oh we’re sure, Rain, we’ve got our ways, you know that. Sources and methods, though, nothing I can talk about. But the missing disk, that’s not even the best part. You want to hear the best part?”

“I can’t wait.”

“Okay, then,” he said, leaning closer to me and smiling his grotesque smile again. “The best part is that it wasn’t really a heart attack . . .someone iced this fucker, someone who knew how to make it look like natural causes.”

“I don’t know, Holtzer. It sounds pretty far-fetched.”

“It does, doesn’t it? Especially because there are so few people in the whole world, let alone Japan, who could pull something like that off. Hell, the only one I know of is you.”

“This is what you wanted to meet me for?” I said. “To suggest that I was mixed up in this kind of bullshit?”

“C’mon, Rain. Enough fucking around. I know exactly what you’re mixed up in.”

“I’m not following you.”

“No? I’ve got news for you, then. Half the jobs you’ve done over the last ten years, you’ve done for us.”

What the hell?

He leaned closer and whispered the names of various prominent politicians, bankers, and bureaucrats who had met untimely but natural ends. They were all my work.

“You can read those names in the paper,” I said, but I knew he had more.

He told me the particulars of the bulletin board system I had been using with Benny, the numbers of the relevant Swiss accounts.

Goddamn, I thought, feeling sick. You’ve been nothing but a fool for these people. It’s never stopped. Goddamn.

“I know this is a shock for you, Rain,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “All these years you’ve thought you’ve been working freelance and in fact the agency has been paying the bills. But look on the bright side, okay? You’re great at what you do! Christ, you’re a fucking magician, making these people disappear without a trace, without a sign that there was any foul play. I wish I knew how you do it. I really do.”

I looked at him, my eyes expressionless. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to show you sometime.”

“Dream on, pal. Now look, we had access to the autopsy report. Kawamura had a pacemaker that somehow managed to shut itself off. The coroner attributed it to a defect. But you know what? We did a little research and found out that a defect like that is just about impossible. Someone shut that pacemaker off, Rain. Your kind of job exactly. I want to know who hired you.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said.

“What doesn’t?”

“Why go to such lengths just to retrieve the disk?”

His eyes narrowed. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I can’t. I can only tell you that if I had wanted that disk, I could have found a lot of easier ways to take it.”

“Maybe it wasn’t up to you,” he said. “Maybe whoever hired you on this one told you to retrieve it. I know you’re not in the habit of asking a lot of questions about these assignments.”

“And have I ever been in the habit of being an errand boy on these jobs? ‘Retrieving’ requested items?”

He crossed his arms and looked at me. “Not that I know of.”

“Then it sounds like you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“You did him, Rain. You were the last one with him. You have to understand, it doesn’t look good.”

“My reputation will have to suffer.”

He massaged his chin for a moment while he looked at me. “You know that the Agency is the least of your worries among the people who are trying to get the disk back.”

“What people?”

“Who do you think? The people who it implicates. The politicians, the yakuza, the muscle behind the whole Japanese power structure.”

I considered for a moment, then said, “How did you find out about me? About me in Japan?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, that would fall under sources and methods again, nothing I can discuss here. But I’ll tell you what.” He leaned forward again. “Come on in, and we can talk about anything you want.”

It was such a non sequitur that I thought I heard wrong. “Did you say, ‘Come on in’?”

“Yes, I did. If you look at your situation, you’ll see that you need our help.”

“I didn’t know you were such a humanitarian, Holtzer.”

“Cut the shit, Rain. We’re not doing this for humanity. We want your cooperation. Either you’ve got that disk, or because you were hunting Kawamura you’ve probably got information that might help us find it. We’ll help you in exchange. It’s as simple as that.”

But I knew these people, and I knew Holtzer. Nothing was ever simple with them — and the simpler it looked, the harder they were about to nail you.

“I’m in an uncomfortable spot,” I said. “No sense denying it. Maybe I’ve got to trust someone. But it’s not going to be you.”

“Look, if this is about the war, you’re being ridiculous. It was a long time ago. This is another time, another place.”

“But the people are the same.”

He waved his hand as though trying to dispel an offensive odor. “It doesn’t matter what you think of me, Rain. Because this isn’t about us. The situation is what matters, and the situation is this: The police want you. The LDP wants you. The yakuza wants you. And they’re going to find you because your cover is fucking blown. Now let us help you.”

What to do. Take him out right here? They knew where I lived, which made me newly vulnerable, and taking out the station chief could lead to retribution.

The car behind us made a right. I glanced back and saw the car that was following it, a black sedan with three or four Japanese in it, slow down instead of taking up the space that had developed. Not an effective strategy for driving in Tokyo traffic.

I waited until we were almost at the next light, then told the driver to make a left. He just had time to brake and make the turn. The sedan changed lanes with us.

I told the driver I was mistaken, that he should get back on Meiji-dori. He looked back at me, clearly annoyed, wondering what the hell this was all about.

The sedan stayed with us as we made the turns.

Oh, shit.

“You bring some people with you, Holtzer? I thought I told you to come alone.”

“They’re here to bring you inside. For your protection.”

“Fine, they can follow us back to the embassy,” I said, suddenly scared and trying to think of a way out.

“I’m not going to have a cab drive the two of us into the embassy compound together. It’s enough of a breach of security that I’ve met with you at all. They’ll bring you in. It’s safer.”

How could they have followed him? Even if he were wearing a transmitter in a body cavity, they couldn’t have pinpointed the location in this traffic.

Then I realized. They had played me beautifully. They knew when “Lincoln” called that I was going to demand an immediate meeting. They didn’t know where, but they had people mobile and ready to move the second they found out the place. They had twenty minutes to get to Shinjuku, and they could stay close enough to react to what they heard through the wire without my seeing them. Holtzer must have given them the name of the cab company, the car’s description, the license-plate number, and updated them about its progress until I got in. By then they were already in position. All while I was congratulating myself for thinking so well on my feet and taking control of the situation, while I was relaxing after getting rid of the wire.

I hoped I would live to enjoy the lesson. “Who are they?” I asked.

“People we can trust. Working with the embassy.”

The light at the Kanda River overpass turned red. The cab started to slow down.

I snapped my head right, then left, searching for an avenue of escape.

The sedan crept closer, stopping a car length away.

Holtzer looked at me, trying to gauge what I was going to do. For a split instant our eyes locked. Then he lunged at me.

“It’s for your own good!” he yelled, trying to get his arms around my waist. I saw the back doors of the sedan open, a pair of burly Japanese in sunglasses stepping out on either side.

I tried to push Holtzer away, but his hands were locked behind my back. The driver turned around and started yelling something. I didn’t really hear what.

The two Japanese had closed their doors and were carefully approaching the taxi. Shit.

I wrapped my right arm around Holtzer’s neck, holding his head in place against my chest, and slipped my left between my body and his neck, the ridge of my hand searching for his carotid. “Aum da! Aum Shinrikyo da!” I yelled at the driver. “Sarin!” Aum was the cult that gassed the Tokyo subway in 1995, and memories of the sarin attack can still cause panic.

Holtzer yelled something against my chest. I leaned forward, using my torso and legs like a walnut cracker. I felt him go limp.

“Ei? Nan da tte?” the driver asked, his eyes wide. What do you mean?

One of the Japanese tapped on the passenger-side window. “Aitsu! Aum da! Sarin da! Boku no tomodachi — ishiki ga nai! Ike! Kuruma o dase!” Those men! They’re Aum — they have sarin! My friend is unconscious! Drive! Drive! Getting the right note of terror in my voice wasn’t a reach.

He might have thought it was bullshit or that I was crazy, but sarin wasn’t worth the chance. He snapped the car into gear and hauled the steering wheel to the right, doing a burning-rubber U-turn on Meiji-dori and cutting off oncoming traffic in the process. I saw the Japanese hurrying back to their car.

“Isoide! Isoide! Byoin ni tanomu!” Hurry! We need a hospital!

At the intersection of Meiji-dori and Waseda-dori, the driver ripped through a light that had just turned red, braking into a sliding lefthand turn in the direction of the National Medical Center. The G-force ripped Holtzer away from me. The flow of traffic on Waseda-dori closed in behind us a second later, and I knew the sedan would be stuck for a minute, maybe more.

Tozai Waseda Station was just ahead. Time for me to bail. I told the driver to pull over. Holtzer was slumped against the driver-side door, unconscious but breathing. I wanted to put the strangle back in — one less adversary to worry about. But there was no time.

The driver started to protest, saying that we had to get my friend to a hospital, that we needed to call the police, but I insisted again that he pull over. He stopped and I took out the half of the ten-thousand-yen note I owed him, then threw in one more.

I grabbed the package I had bought for Midori, jumped out of the cab, and bolted down the steps to the subway. If I had to wait for a train I was going to use an alternate exit and stay on foot, but my timing was good — the Tozai was just pulling in. I took it to Nihonbashi Station, switched to the Ginza line, and then changed at Shinbashi to the Yamanote. I did a careful SDR on the way, and by the time I surged through the station turnstiles at Shibuya, I knew I was safe for the moment. But they’d flushed me into the open, and the moment wouldn’t last.

16

AN HOUR LATER I got Harry’s page, and we met at the Doutor coffee shop per our previous arrangement. He was waiting for me when I got there.

“Tell me what you’ve got,” I said.

“Well, it’s strange.”

“Explain ‘strange.’ ”

“Well, the first thing is, this disk has some pretty advanced copy management protection built into it.”

“Can you break it?”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. Copy management is different than encryption. The disk can’t be copied, can’t be distributed electronically, can’t be sent over the Internet.”

“You mean you can make only one copy from the source?”

“One copy or many copies, I’m not sure, but the point is you can’t make copies of copies. No grandchildren in this family.”

“And there’s no way to send the contents of the disk over the Internet, upload to a bulletin board, anything like that?”

“No. If you try, the data will get corrupted. You won’t be able to read it.”

“Well, that explains a few things,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Like why they were messing with disks in the first place. Like why they’re so eager to get this one back. They know it hasn’t been copied or uploaded, so they know their potential damage is still limited to this one disk.”

“That’s right.”

“Now tell me this. Why would whoever controls the data that got copied onto that disk permit even a single copy to be made? Why not no copies? Wouldn’t that be more secure?”

“Probably more secure, but risky, too. If something happened to the master, all your records would be gone. You’d want some kind of backup.”

I considered. “What else is there?”

“Well, as you know, it’s encrypted.”

“Yes.”

“The encryption is strange.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Ever hear of a lattice reduction?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s a kind of code. The cryptographer encodes a message in a pattern, a pattern like the flowers in a symmetrical wallpaper design. But wallpaper patterns are simple — only one image in two dimensions. A more complex code uses a pattern that repeats itself at various levels of detail, in multiple mathematical dimensions. To break the code, you have to find the most basic way the lattice repeats itself — the origin of the pattern, in a way.”

“I get the picture. Can you break it?”

“I’m not sure. I did some work with lattice reductions at Fort Meade, but this one is strange.”

“Harry, if you say that one more time . . .”

“Sorry, sorry. It’s strange because the lattice seems to be a musical pattern, not a physical one.”

“Now I’m not following you.”

“There’s an overlay of what look like musical notes — in fact, my optical drive recognized it as a music disk, not a data disk. The pattern is bizarre, but highly symmetrical.”

“Can you crack it?”

“I’ve been trying to, so far without luck. I’ve got to tell you, John, I’m a little out of my element on this one.”

“Out of your element? All those years with the NSA, what could be out of your element?”

He blushed. “It’s not the encryption. It’s the music. I need a musician to walk me through it.”

“A musician,” I said.

“Yeah, a musician. You know, someone who reads music, preferably someone who writes it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I could really use her help on this,” he said.

“Let me think about it,” I told him, uncomfortable.

“Okay.”

“What about the cell phones? Anything there?”

He smiled. “I was hoping you would ask. Ever hear of the Shinnento?”

“Not sure,” I said, trying to place the name. “New Year something?”

“Shinnen, like faith or conviction, not New Year,” he said, drawing the appropriate kanji in the air with a finger to distinguish one of the homonyms that pervade the language. “It’s a political party. The last call the kendoka made was to their headquarters in Shibakoen, and the number was speed-coded into both of the phones’ memories.” He smiled, obviously relishing what he was about to say next. “And just in case that’s not enough to establish the connection, Conviction was paying the phone bill for the kendoka.”

“Harry, you will never cease to amaze. Tell me more.”

“Okay. Conviction was established in 1978 by a fellow named Yamaoto Toshi, who is still the head of the party. Yamaoto was born in 1949. He’s the only son of a prominent family that traces its lines back to the samurai clans. His father was an officer in the Imperial Army, military occupational specialty communications, who after the war started a company that made portable communications devices. The father got started in business by trading on his family’s connections with the remnants of the zaibatsu, and then got rich during the Korean War, when the American army bought his company’s equipment.”

Zaibatsu were the prewar industrial conglomerates, run by Japan’s most powerful families. After the war MacArthur cut down the tree, but he couldn’t dig out the roots.

“Yamaoto started out in the arts — he spent some years as a teenager in Europe for classical piano training, I think at his mother’s insistence. Apparently he was a bit of a child prodigy. But his father yanked him out of all that when Yamaoto turned twenty, and sent him to the States to complete his education as a prelude to taking over the family business. Yamaoto got a master’s in business from Harvard, and was running the company’s U.S. operations when his old man died. At which point Yamaoto returned to Japan, sold the business, and used the money to establish Conviction and run for parliament.”

“The piano training. Is there a connection with the way the disk is encrypted?”

“Don’t know for sure. There could be.”

“Sorry. Keep going.”

“Apparently the father’s former position in the Imperial Army and the long samurai lineage made an impression on the son’s politics. Conviction was a platform for Yamaoto’s right-wing ideas. He was elected in 1985 to a seat in Nagano-ken, which he promptly lost in the next election.”

“Yeah, you don’t get elected in Japan because of your ideas,” I said. “It’s pork that pays.”

“That’s exactly the lesson Yamaoto learned from his defeat. After he was elected, he spent all his time and political capital arguing for abolishing Article Nine of the Constitution so that Japan could build up its military, kicking the U.S. out of Japan, teaching Shinto in the schools — the usual positions. But after his defeat, he ran again — this time focusing on the roads and bridges he would build for his constituents, the rice subsidies and tariffs he would impose. Very different politician. The nationalistic stuff was back-burnered. He got his seat back in eighty-seven, and has held on to it ever since.”

“But Conviction is a marginal player. I’ve never even read about the LDP using them to form a coalition. Outside Nagano-ken, I doubt anyone has heard of them.”

“But Yamaoto has a few things going for him. One, Conviction is very well funded. That’s his father’s legacy. Two, he knows how to dole out the pork. Nagano has a number of farming districts, and Yamaoto keeps the subsidies rolling in and is a vocal opponent of any relaxation of Japan’s refusal to allow foreign rice into the country. And three, he has a lot of support in the Shinto community.”

“Shinto,” I said, musing. Shinto is a nature-worshiping religion that Japan’s nationalists turned into an ideology of Japaneseness before the war. Unlike Christianity and Buddhism, Shinto is native to Japan and isn’t practiced anywhere else. There was something about the connection that was bothering me, something I should have known. Then I realized.

“That’s how they found out where I live,” I said. “No wonder I’ve been seeing priests begging for alms outside of stations on the Mita-sen. They blanketed me with static surveillance, traced me back to my neighborhood one step at a time. Goddamnit, how could I have missed it? I almost gave one of them a hundred yen the other day.”

His eyes were worried. “How would they know to focus on the Mita line?”

“They probably didn’t, for sure. But with a little luck, a little coincidence, a little Holtzer feeding them a dossier, maybe even military-era photographs, it could be done. If they placed me at the Kodokan, they would have assumed that I wouldn’t live too far from it. And there are only three train lines with stops within a reasonable distance from the building, so all they had to do was commit enough manpower at enough places for enough time. Shit, they really nailed me.”

I had to give them credit; it was nicely done. Static surveillance is almost impossible to spot. Unlike the moving variety, you can’t get the person behind you to do something unnatural to give himself away. It’s more like a zone defense in basketball: no matter where the guy with the ball goes, there’s always someone new in the next zone to pick him up. If you can put enough people in place to make it work, it’s deadly.

“What’s the basis for the Shinto connection?” I asked.

“Shinto is a huge organization, with priests running shrines at the national, local, even neighborhood levels. As a result, the shrines take in a lot of donations and are well funded — so they’re in a position to dispense patronage to the politicians they favor. And Yamaoto wants a much bigger role for Shinto in Japan, which means more power for the priests.”

“So the shrines are part of his funding?”

“Yes, but it’s more than that. Shinto is part of Conviction’s program. The party wants it taught in schools; it wants to form an anticrime alliance between the police and the local shrines. Don’t forget, Shinto was at the center of prewar Japanese nationalism. It’s unique to Japan, and can easily be bent — has been bent — to foster the xenophobic cult of the Yamato Gokoro, the Japanese soul. And it’s on the rise in Japan today, although not many people realize it outside the country.”

“You said their headquarters is in Shibakoen,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“Okay, then. While you’re having a crack at the lattice, I’m going to need some surveillance equipment — infrared and laser. And video. Also a transmitter in case I can get inside. I want to listen in on our friends at Conviction.”

“Why?”

“I need more information. Whose disk was this? Who’s trying to get it back? Why? Without that information, there’s not much I can do to protect myself. Or Midori.”

“You need to get pretty close to the building to use that kind of equipment, never mind placing a transmitter. It’ll be dangerous. Why don’t you just give me some time with the lattice? Maybe everything you need is already in it.”

“I don’t have time. It might take you a week to crack the code, or you might not be able to crack it at all. In the meantime, I’m up against the Agency, the yakuza, and an army of Shinto priests. They know where I live, and I’ve been flushed out into the open. Time is running against me — I’ve got to end this soon.”

“Well, why don’t you just get out of the country? At least until I’m done with the lattice. What’s keeping you here?”

“For one thing, I’ve got to take care of Midori, and she can’t leave. I don’t like the idea of her traveling under her own passport, and I doubt she’s got false papers handy.”

He nodded as though he understood, then looked at me closely. “Is something going on between you two?”

I didn’t answer.

“I knew it,” he said, blushing.

“I should have known I couldn’t put one over on you.”

He shook his head. “Is this why you don’t want to let her help me with the lattice?”

“Am I that transparent?”

“Not usually.”

“All right, I’ll ask her,” I said, not seeing an alternative.

“I could use her help.”

“I know. Don’t worry. I didn’t really expect you to be able to decrypt something as complex as this without help.”

For a half second his mouth started to drop in indignation. Then he saw my smile.

“Had you there,” I told him.

17

HARRY RENTED ME a van from a place in Roppongi, using alias ID just in case, while I waited at his apartment to keep my exposure down. His apartment is a strange place, crammed with arcane electronic equipment, but nothing to make his life more comfortable. He’d told me a few years earlier that he’d read how the police had caught some indoor marijuana farmers by monitoring their electric bills — seems that hydroponic equipment sucks down a lot more electricity than average — and now Harry thinks his electronic signature might lead the police to him. So he doesn’t use any electrical appliances that aren’t absolutely necessary: a category that, in Harry’s world, doesn’t include a refrigerator, heat, or air-conditioning.

When he came back, we loaded the equipment into the back of the van. It’s sophisticated stuff. The laser reads the vibrations on windows that are caused by conversation inside, then feeds the resulting data into a computer, which breaks down the patterns into words. And the infrared can read minutely different temperatures on glass — the kind caused by body heat in an otherwise cool room.

When we were done, I parked the van and made my way back to Shibuya, of course conducting a solid SDR en route.

I got to the hotel at a little past one o’clock. I had picked up some sandwiches at a stand I found on one of the nameless streets that snake off Dogenzaka, and Midori and I ate them sitting on the floor while I filled her in on what was going on. I gave her the package I had brought, told her that she should wear the scarf and sunglasses when she went out. I gave her Harry’s address, told her to put her things together and meet me there in two hours.

When I arrived at Harry’s, he was already running Kawamura’s disk. A half hour later the buzzer rang; Harry walked over to the intercom, pressed a button, and said, “Hai.”

“Watashi desu” came the response. It’s me. I nodded, getting up to check the window, and Harry pressed the button to open the front entrance. Then he walked over to his door, opened it, and peered out. Better to see who’s coming before they get to your position, while you still have time to react.

A minute later he opened the door wide and motioned Midori to come inside.

I said to her in Japanese, “This is Harry, the friend I told you about. He’s a little shy around people because he spends all his time with computers. Just be nice to him and he’ll open up after a while.”

“Hajimemashite,” Midori said, turning to Harry and bowing. Nice to meet you.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Harry responded in Japanese. He was blinking rapidly, and I could see that he was nervous. “Please don’t listen to my friend. The government used him to test experimental drugs during the war, and it’s led to premature senility.”

Harry? I thought, impressed with his sudden gumption.

Midori made a face of perfect innocence and said, “It was caused by drugs?”

She had a light touch with him, I was glad to see. Harry looked at me with a radiant smile, feeling he’d finally gotten the better of me, and maybe had found an ally, too.

“Okay, I can see you’re both going to get along,” I said, cutting them off before Harry used his newfound courage to escalate to who knows what. “We don’t have much time. This is the plan.” I explained to Midori what I was going to do.

“I don’t like it,” she said, when I was done. “They could see you. It could be dangerous.”

“No one’s going to see me.”

“You should give Harry and me some time with the musical code.”

“I’ve already been over this with Harry. You both do your jobs; I’ll do mine. It’s more efficient. I’ll be fine.”

I DROVE THE van to the Conviction facility in Shibakoen, just south of the government district in Kasumigaseki. Conviction occupied part of the second floor of a building on Hibiya-dori, across from Shiba Park. I would use the laser to pick up the locus of conversation in their offices, and then, based on Harry’s analysis of what we picked up, I’d be able to guess which room or rooms would be the best candidates for a transmitter. The same equipment would tell me when the offices had emptied out, probably well after dark, and that’s when I’d go in to place the bug. The video might help us identify anyone else who was involved with the Agency and Conviction, and give us some clues about the nature of the connection between the two.

I parked across the street from the building. The spot was in a no-parking zone, but it was a good enough location to risk a ticket from a bored meter maid.

I had just finished setting up the equipment and targeting it at the appropriate windows when I heard a tap on the van’s passenger-side window. I looked up and saw a uniformed cop. He was rapping the glass with his nightstick.

Oh, shit. I made a conciliatory gesture, as though I was going to just drive away, but he shook his head and said, “Dete yo.” Get out.

The equipment was pointing out the back driver-side window, and wasn’t visible from the cop’s vantage point. I would have to take a chance. I slid across to the passenger side and opened the door, then stepped down onto the curb.

There were three men waiting on the blind side of the van, where I couldn’t see them until I was outside. They were armed with matching Beretta 92 Compacts and wore sunglasses and bulky coats — light disguise to change the shape of the face and the build. I took this to mean that they would shoot me if I resisted, counting on the disguises to confuse potential witnesses. They all had the classic kendoka’s ears. I recognized the one standing closest to me from outside Midori’s apartment — the guy with the flat nose who had gone in after I had ambushed Midori’s would-be abductors. One of them thanked the cop, who turned and walked away.

They motioned me across the street, and there wasn’t much I could do except comply. At least this solved the problem of how I was going to get into the building. I had an earpiece in my pocket, as well as one of Harry’s custom adhesive-backed microtransmitters. If I saw the chance, I’d put the transmitter in place.

They brought me in the front entrance, their hands staying steady in their coat pockets. We took the stairs to the second floor, the three of them crowding me on the way up, taking away any room to maneuver. When we got to the landing at the top of the stairs, Flatnose shoved me up against the wall, pushing his gun against my neck. One of his partners patted me down. He was looking for a weapon and didn’t notice the small transmitter in my pocket.

When he was done, Flatnose took a step back and suddenly kneed me in the balls. I doubled over and he kicked me in the stomach, then twice again in the ribs. I dropped down to my knees, sucking wind, pain shooting through my torso. I was trying to get my arms up in anticipation of another blow when one of them stepped between Flatnose and me, saying “Iya, sono kurai ni shite oke.” That’s enough. I wondered distantly if I was in for a game of good cop, bad cop.

We stayed like that for a few minutes, Flatnose’s friend restraining him while I tried to catch my breath. When I was able I stood up, and they took me down a short hallway with closed doors on both sides. We stopped outside the last door on the right. Flatnose knocked, and a voice answered, “Dozo.” Come in.

They brought me into a room that was spacious by Japanese standards, furnished in the traditional minimalist fashion. Lots of light-hued wood, expensive-looking ceramics on the shelves. The walls were decorated with hanga, wood-block prints. Probably originals. A small leather couch and armchairs in one corner of the room, arranged around a spotless glass coffee table. The overall appearance was clean and prosperous, which I guessed was the impression these people wanted to project. Maybe they hid Flatnose and his pals when they had guests.

There was a wooden desk on the far side of the room. It took me a second to recognize the guy sitting behind it. I hadn’t seen him in a suit before.

It was the judoka from the Kodokan. The one I’d fought in randori.

“Hello, John Rain,” he said, with a small smile. “Hisashiburi desu ne.” It’s been awhile.

I returned his gaze. “Hello, Yamaoto.”

He stood up and circled to the front of the desk with the strong, graceful movements that I had first noticed at the Kodokan. “Thank you for coming today,” he said. “I was expecting you.”

That much was clear. “Sorry I didn’t call first,” I told him.

“No, no, not at all. That I would never expect. But I did anticipate that you would find a way to take the initiative — after all, as a judoka you are more comfortable on the offensive, using defense merely as a feint.”

He nodded to his men, told them in Japanese to wait outside. I watched them file out quietly, Flatnose eyeing me as he closed the door behind them.

“Did I do something to offend the ugly one?” I asked, rubbing my ribs. “I get the feeling he doesn’t like me.”

“Was he rough with you? I told him not to be, but he has trouble controlling his temper. Ishikawa, the man you killed outside your apartment, was a friend of his.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

He shook his head as though it was all a misunderstanding. “Dozo, suwatte kudasai,” he said. “Please, sit. Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thank you. I’m not thirsty. And I’m more comfortable standing.”

He nodded. “I know what you are thinking, Rain-san. Don’t forget, I’ve seen how fast you are. That is why there are three armed men outside the door — in case you manage to get past me.” He smiled, a supremely confident smile, and remembering how things went at the Kodokan, I knew his confidence was justified. “That would be an interesting contest, but now is not the time. Please, why don’t you make yourself comfortable, and we can think of a way to solve our mutual problem.”

“ ‘Mutual problem’?”

“Yes, the problem is mutual. You have something that I want, or you know where it is. Once I have it, you will no longer be a liability, and we can ‘live and let live.’ But if I don’t have it, the situation becomes more difficult.”

I was silent, waiting to see if he would say more. After a moment he said, “I really would like to talk with you. Dozo kakete kudasai.” Please sit.

I bowed my head and walked over to one of the chairs facing the couch, putting my hands in my pockets as I did so, affecting an air of resignation. I switched on the transmitter. Regardless of how this turned out, Harry would at least hear everything. I sat down and waited.

“Thank you,” he said, sitting opposite me on the couch. “Now tell me, how did you find me?”

I shrugged. “Your man Ishikawa broke into my apartment and tried to kill me. I got his cell phone and used it to find out he’s connected to you. The rest was just taking the initiative, as you say — the best defense is a good offense.”

“Ishikawa wasn’t at your apartment to kill you. He was there to question you.”

“If that was Ishikawa’s idea of ‘questioning,’ ” I said, “you should send him to Dale Carnegie.”

“Regardless. We are not after you — only the disk.”

“Disk?”

“Please don’t insult my intelligence. You’re protecting Kawamura Midori.”

That caught me by surprise. But then I realized — the men who were waiting for her at her apartment. They must have been Yamaoto’s people. They’d been focusing on her, thinking that if she had her father’s things she might have the disk, and then I walked into the picture. It was only after I ambushed them and Midori went underground that they started coming at me.

“What does she have to do with this?”

“I know that her father had the disk when he died. It is therefore likely that she has it now. And she is in hiding.”

“Of course she’s in hiding. She had the same kind of welcome party at her apartment that I had at mine. She knows she’s in danger but doesn’t understand why.”

“Ordinarily a person in her position would go to the police. She has not done so.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that. I don’t trust the police myself.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. She took off after the ambush at her apartment. She thought I was with your people.”

“Really? She hasn’t resurfaced.”

“Maybe she’s staying with friends — in the country or something. She looked pretty scared to me.”

“I see,” he said, steepling his fingers. “You understand, Rain-san, there is information on that disk that would be harmful to Japan, useful to her enemies, if revealed. These enemies are looking for the disk, too.”

I thought of Holtzer, how he wanted to turn the Japanese government into a “fuckboy,” as only Holtzer could put it.

One thing I didn’t understand. “Why the contact at the Kodokan?” I asked.

“Curiosity,” he said, his posture contemplative. “I wanted to know what would drive a man with a history like yours. If I had known then of the way you would soon be involved in this matter, I would of course have avoided the contact.”

“What do mean, ‘history’?”

“A man of two such opposed countries and cultures.”

“I think I’m missing something. Other than the fact that I inadvertently showed up at the same time as your men at Midori’s apartment, I didn’t know we were acquainted.”

“Ah, of course. You wouldn’t know, but I have retained you for your services from time to time.”

Through Benny, then. Christ, the little bastard really slept around. Probably reselling my services at a markup. Not any more, though.

“So you see, until recently, your interests and mine have always been aligned. If we can just clear up this one matter, we can return to the status quo ante bellum.”

He wanted that disk badly. I hoped Harry’s algorithms were up to speed.

“The problem, as I’ve said, is that I don’t know where this disk is, or even what it is,” I told him. “If I did, I’d give it to you. But I don’t.”

He frowned. “I am sorry to hear that. And Kawamura’s daughter, she doesn’t know, either?”

“How would I know?”

He nodded his head gravely. “This is a problem. You see, until I have what I am looking for, Kawamura’s daughter is a liability. It would be much safer for her if the item were returned to me.”

In that moment I was tempted to believe that there was some truth to what he was saying. If he had the disk back, Midori wouldn’t be a liability.

But there were other parties after it, too, and they would have no way of knowing that Midori didn’t have it anymore. Besides, the logistics were impossible. Yamaoto would never let me leave on the strength of a promise to return with the disk, and I wasn’t going to tell him where to find Midori and Harry. Besides, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t go on cleaning up loose ends even after the disk had been returned.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think she has what you’re looking for,” I said. “Why would Kawamura have given her anything, anyway? He would have known it would have put her in danger, right?”

“He may have given it to her inadvertently. Besides, as I have said already, the fact that she has not gone to the police is telling.”

I said nothing, waiting for him.

“Enough games,” he said finally. He stood and walked over to a coat rack, where he took a suit jacket off a hanger. “I have an appointment elsewhere and have no more time to try to persuade you. Tell me where I can find the disk, or tell me where to find Kawamura Midori.”

“I told you I don’t know.”

“Unfortunately, there is only one way to confirm your ignorance. I think you know what it is.”

Neither of us said anything more for about a full minute. I heard him exhale, as though he had been holding his breath. “Rain-san, you are in a difficult position, and I am sympathetic. But you must understand that I will have what I want. If you tell me now, as a friend, then I can trust you. You will be free to leave. But if my men have to acquire the information from you by other means, I may not be able to let you go afterwards. In fact, you may not be in a condition to go. Do you understand? If I don’t have the disk, I am forced to do the next best thing: systematically eliminate every risk associated with it. So you see, it would be much better if you tell me now.”

I folded my arms across my chest and regarded him. My look was impassive, but inside my head I was playing a map of the hallway, the staircase, trying to find a way out.

He must have really been hoping I would crack — he waited a long time. Finally he called for his men. The door opened, and I was surrounded and pulled to my feet. He barked some orders at them in Japanese. Find out where the disk is. And Midori. Whatever it takes.

They hauled me out of the room. Behind me, Yamaoto was saying, “I am very disappointed.” I barely heard it. I was too busy looking for a way out.

18

THEY TOOK ME back down the hallway. I noted the entrance as we went past double glass doors, a dead bolt visibly locked in place in the small gap between them. The doors had opened outward when we came in. If I hit them dead center, on the fly, the lock might give. If it didn’t, and I had time to back up and try again, I could try to go through the glass, hope not to get cut too badly. Lousy options, but they beat being tortured to death by Flatnose and his handsome friends.

They were pretty rough shoving me down the hallway ahead of them, and I tried to emanate waves of fear and helplessness so their confidence would build. I wanted them to feel in control, to believe that I was cowed by their size and their numbers. That might give me some small chance at surprise. Beyond that, I had only one advantage, the same one SOG always had against the North Vietnamese, even when we were operating in their backyard: Considering what was coming, I was more motivated to escape than they were to hold me.

They took me to a room at the farthest end of the corridor. It was small, only about three meters square. The door had a window of frosted glass in its center and opened inward, to the left, at the back of the room. To the right was a small rectangular table with two chairs on either side of it. They pushed me into one of the chairs, my back to the door. I put my hands on my knees, under the table.

Flatnose disappeared for a few minutes. When he returned, he was carrying a large wooden truncheon. He took a seat on the other side of the table, facing me. I heard the other two take up positions behind me, to either side.

There was about a meter of empty space between Flatnose’s back and the wall. Good.

They hadn’t locked the door. Why bother? There were three of them, and they were big bastards. This was their place. They knew they were in control.

I lifted the table a fraction with my knees, getting a feel for its weight. Despite its size, it was satisfyingly heavy. My heart was thudding in my ears, my neck.

Flatnose started to say something. I didn’t hear what. As soon as the words began I sprang up, my arms catching the table from underneath, driving it up and into him. The force of it slammed him backward into the wall. I felt the impact jolt through my arms.

The other two leaped forward. I shot my leg out into the guy coming in on my right. It caught him squarely in the gut, so hard his momentum continued to carry his feet forward. He went down and then the other one was on me.

He grabbed me from behind and tried for hadaka jime, a sleeper hold, but I turtled my neck in and his forearm closed across my mouth. Still, his grip was so strong it felt like he was going to unhinge my jaw. I opened my mouth and the leading edge of his arm jammed between my teeth. Before he could twist free I bit down hard. I felt my teeth sinking into muscle and heard him howl.

The grip loosened and I spun inside it, pumping uppercuts into his abdomen. He dropped his arms to protect his body and I caught him with a solid palm-heel under the nose. He didn’t fall, but he was dazed. I shoved him to the right and scrambled for the door.

The guy I’d kicked grabbed my leg from the ground but I shook free. I gripped the doorknob hard and twisted it, flung the door open. It rocketed into the wall, the frosted glass exploding.

I stumbled into the hallway, running and almost falling like a man tearing out of control down a steep hill. It took me only a second to reach the entrance doors. I hit them hard, not holding anything back, and they burst open at the center. I spilled out into the hallway, rolled to my feet, and bolted for the stairwell. When I reached the outer door I wrenched it open and plunged down the stairs four at a time, my hand on the railing for balance. Just as I cleared the first riser, I heard the door slam open. They were already after me — not quite the head start I’d hoped for.

I had to get out of there before reinforcements started pouring in. Shibakoen subway station was on the opposite side of Hibiya-dori. I bolted across the street, trying to flow diagonally into the traffic, tires screeching as I jumped in front of cars.

Thick crowds of pedestrians were exiting at the top of the steps to the station — a train must have just come in. I glanced back as I hit the entrance and saw two of Yamaoto’s boys sprinting after me.

I could hear the chimes of another train pulling in. Maybe I could make it. I had no doubt that they would shoot me now if they could. In this crowd, no one would know where the shots had come from. I fought frantically for space, ducking past three slow-moving old women who were blocking the stairway, and spun left at the bottom of the stairs. There was a concession stand in front of the ticket windows and as I dodged past it I grabbed a palm-sized canned coffee. Hundred and ninety grams. Hard metal edges.

I shoved my way through the wickets and onto the platform. I was too late — the doors had already closed, and the train was starting to move.

The platform was crowded, but there was a clear passage alongside the train. I maneuvered into it, glanced back and saw one of Yamaoto’s goons pass the wickets and burst through the crowd into the clear space next to the train.

I turned and measured the distance. About five meters, closing fast.

I threw the can like a fastball, aiming for center mass. It went a little high and caught him in the sternum with a thud I could hear even over the noise of the crowd. He went down hard. But his buddy was right behind him, his gun out.

I spun around. The train was picking up speed.

I dropped my head and sprinted after it, my breath hammering in and out. I heard a gunshot. Then another.

Two meters. One.

I was close enough to reach out and touch the vertical bar at the back corner of the car, but I couldn’t get any closer. For an instant, my speed was perfectly synchronized with the train. Then it started to slip away.

I gave a wild yell and leaped forward, my fingers outstretched for the bar. For one bad second I thought I’d come up short and felt myself falling — then my hand closed around cold metal.

My body fell forward and my knees smacked into the back of the train. My feet were dangling just over the tracks. My fingers were slipping off the bar. I looked up, saw a kid in a school uniform staring at me out the back window, his mouth open. Then the train entered the tunnel and I lost my grip.

I twisted instinctively, getting my left arm under and across my body so I could roll with the impact. Still, I hit the tracks so hard that I actually bounced instead of rolling. There was one enormous shock all down my left side, then a brief sensation of flight. An instant later I felt a dull whump! and came to a sudden stop.

I was on my back, looking up at the ceiling of the subway tunnel. I lay there for a moment, the wind knocked out of me, wiggling my toes, flexing my fingers. Everything seemed to be working.

Five seconds went by, then another five. I drew in a few hitching breaths.

What the hell, I thought. What the hell did I land on?

I grunted and sat up. I was on a large sand pile to the left of the tracks. Beside it were two hard-hatted Japanese construction workers, looking at me, their mouths slightly agape.

Next to the sand pile was a concrete floor that the workers were repairing. They were using the sand to mix cement. I realized that if I had let go of the train even a half second later, I would have landed on concrete instead of a soft pile of sand.

I slid over to the ground, stood, and began brushing myself off. The shape of my body was imprinted in the sand like something from an over-the-top cartoon.

The construction workers hadn’t changed their posture. They were still looking at me, mouths still agape, and I realized they were in mild shock at what they had just seen.

“Ah, sumimasen,” I began, not knowing what else to say. “Etto, otearae wa arimasu ka?” Excuse me, do you have a bathroom?

They maintained their frozen postures, and I realized that my question had discombobulated them further. Just as well. I saw that I was only a few meters inside the tunnel and started walking out.

I considered what had happened. Yamaoto’s men must have seen me go into the tunnel hanging on to the back of the train, but not seen me slip, and I was going too fast for them to expect that I’d let go deliberately. So they were figuring that, in three minutes, I would be deposited at Mita station, the end of the line. They must have bolted out of the station to Mita to try to intercept me.

I had a wild idea.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the earpiece I had pocketed before Flatnose and his crew had caught me in the van, slipped it into place. I felt in my pocket for the adhesive-backed transmitter. Still there. But was it still transmitting?

“Harry? Can you hear me? Talk to me,” I said.

There was a long pause, and just as I started to try again the earpiece came to life.

“John! What the hell is going on? Where are you?”

It felt great to hear the kid. “Relax, I’m okay. But I need your help.”

“What’s going on? I’ve been listening to everything. Are you in a train station? Are you all right?”

I hauled myself up onto the platform. Some people stared at me but I ignored them, walking past them as though it was perfectly natural that I had just emerged filthy and bruised from the depths of one of Tokyo’s subway tunnels. “I’ve been better, but we can talk about that later. Is the equipment still up and running?”

“Yes, I’m still getting a feed on all the rooms in the building.”

“Okay, that’s what I need to know. Who’s still in the building?”

“Infrared says just one guy. Everyone else left right after you.”

“Yamaoto, too?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the guy who stayed behind?”

“Very last room on the right as you face the building — where the three men took you. He’s been there since you got out.”

That would be Flatnose or one of his boys — must not have been in condition to come after me. It felt good to know.

“Okay, here’s the situation. They all think I’m on the back of a subway to Mita, and that’s where they’re going to converge in about four minutes. It’ll take them maybe another five to figure out that I’m not there and that they’ve lost me, and another five after that to get back to the Conviction building. So I’ve got fourteen minutes to get back in there and plant the bug.”

“What? You don’t know where they are. What if they didn’t all go to Mita? They could come back while you’re still in there!”

“I’m counting on you to let me know if that’s going to happen. You’re still getting a video feed from the van, right?”

“Yeah, it’s still broadcasting.”

“Look, I’m practically at the building now — still all clear?”

“Still all clear, but this is crazy.”

“I’m never going to get a better chance. They’re all out of the building, nothing’s going to be locked, and when they get back, we’ll be able to hear everything they say. I’m going in.”

“Okay, I can see you now. Do it fast.”

That advice I didn’t need. I went through the stairway doors and turned right, then jogged down the hallway to the entrance. As I expected, they had left in a hurry and it was wide open.

Yamaoto’s office was three doors down to the right. I was going to be in and out in no time.

The door was closed. I reached out for the knob, tried to turn it.

“Oh, fuck,” I breathed.

“What is it?”

“It’s locked.”

“Forget it — put the bug somewhere else.”

“I can’t — this is where we need to listen.” I examined the lock, and could see that it was only a regular five-pin tumbler. Not a big deal. “Hang on a minute. I think I can get in.”

“John, get out of there. They could come back at any time.”

I didn’t answer. I slipped out my keys and detached one of my homemade picks and the dental mirror. The latter’s long, slim handle made for a nice field-expedient tension wrench. I slipped the handle into the lock and gently rotated it clockwise. When the slack in the cylinder was gone, I eased in the pick and started working the fifth tumbler.

“Don’t try to pick the lock! You’re no good at it! Just put it somewhere else and get out!”

“What do you mean I’m no good at it? I taught you how to do it, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, that’s how I know you’re no good.” He stopped. Probably figured it was useless to try to stop me so he might as well let me concentrate.

I felt the fifth tumbler click, then lost it. Damn. I turned the dental mirror another fraction, tightening the cylinder against the pins. “Harry? I miss your voice. . . .” Another tumbler slipped.

“Don’t talk to me. Concentrate.”

“I am, but it’s so hard. . . .” I felt the fifth pin click and hold. The next three were easy. Just one more.

The last pin was damaged. I couldn’t feel the click. I worked the pick up and down, but couldn’t get anything.

“C’mon, sweetheart, where are you?” I breathed. I held my breath and jiggled the pick.

I never felt the tumbler click into place. But the knob was suddenly free. It twisted to the right and I was in.

The office was the same as when I’d left it. Even the lights were still on. I knelt down next to the leather couch and felt its underside. It was covered with some kind of cloth. The edges were stapled to what felt like wood. Good backing to attach the bug.

I pulled the adhesive covering off the transmitter and pressed it into place. Anyone talking in this room was going to come through loud and clear.

Harry’s voice in my ear: “John, two of them just got back. They’re coming up the walkway. Get out right now. Use the side exit — the one at the left side of building as you face it.”

“Shit, the transmitter’s already in place. I’m not going to be able to respond to you once I leave this room. Keep talking to me.”

“They just stopped at the end of the walkway to the front entrance. Maybe they’re waiting for the others. Go down to the side entrance and stay there until I tell you you’re clear.”

“Okay. I’m gone.” I relocked the door from the inside, then backed out and closed it behind me. Turned and started to move in the direction of the exterior corridor.

Flatnose was coming down the hallway. His shirt was covered with blood. The table must have caught him in the face and broken his nose again. It hadn’t improved his appearance. Hoarse animal sounds were rumbling up out of his chest.

He was standing between me and the entrance. Nowhere to go but through him.

Harry again, a second late: “There’s one right in front of you! And the others are coming up the walk!”

Flatnose dropped his head, his neck and shoulders bunching, looking like a bull about to charge.

All he wanted was to get his hands on me. He was going to come at me hard, crazed with rage, not thinking.

He launched himself at me, closing the gap fast. As he lunged for my neck, I grabbed his wet shirt and dropped to the floor in modified tomo-nage, my right foot catching him in the balls and hurling him over me. He landed on his back with a thud I could feel through the floor. Using the momentum of the throw I rolled to my feet, took two long steps over to him, and leaped into the air like a pissed-off bronco, coming down with both feet as hard as I could on his prone torso. I felt bones breaking inside him and all the air being driven from his body. He made a sound like a balloon deflating in a puddle of water and I knew he was done.

I lurched toward the corridor, then stopped. If they found him like this in the middle of the hallway, they would know I’d been back here, maybe figure out why. They might look for a bug. I had to get him back to the room at the other end of the hallway, where it would look like he’d died by a freak shot from the table.

His legs were pointing in the right direction. I squatted between them, facing away from him, grabbed him around the knees and stood. He was heavier than he looked. I leaned forward and dragged him, feeling like a horse yoked to a wagon with square wheels. There were bursts of pain in my back.

Harry’s voice in my ear again: “What are you doing? They’re coming in the front entrance. You’ve got maybe twelve seconds to get clear of the corridor.”

I dumped him in the room at the end of the hallway and raced out into the corridor, sprinting toward the side exit.

I reached the entrance to the side stairwell and heard the door on the opposite side of the corridor opening. I yanked open the door and threw myself through it, pulling it shut behind me but stopping it before it closed completely.

I squatted on the landing, fighting the screaming need to breathe, holding the door open a crack and watching as three of Yamaoto’s men walked into the corridor. One of them was doubled over — the guy I had nailed with the can of coffee. They walked into Conviction’s offices and out of my field of vision.

Immediately, I heard Harry: “They’re back in the office. The front of the building is clear. Walk out the side exit now and head east across the park toward Sakurada-dori.”

I went down the stairs quietly but fast. Stuck my head out the exit door at the bottom, looked both ways. All clear. I shuffled down an alley connecting Hibiya-dori and Chuo-dori and cut across the park. The sun felt good on my face.