Rainfall

PART THREE

Now . . . they resolved to go back to their own land; because the years have a kind of emptiness when we spend too many of them on a foreign shore. But . . . if we do return, we find that the native air has lost its invigorating quality, and that life has shifted its reality to the spot where we have deemed ourselves only temporary residents.

Thus, between two countries, we have none at all . . .

— NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Marble Faun

19

“YOU ARE A maniac with a death wish, and I’m never working with you again,” Harry told me when I got to his apartment.

“I’m never working with me again, either,” I said. “Have you been getting anything from the transmitter?”

“Yes, everything that went on while you were there and a short meeting that just ended. It’s stored on the hard drive.”

“They say anything about the guy I ran into on my way out?”

“What do you mean?”

“I had a little encounter with one of Yamaoto’s men just after I put the transmitter in place. They must have figured it had happened earlier, or you would have heard them say something.”

“Oh, that. Yes, they thought it happened when you busted out of interrogation. They didn’t know you’d been back. You know, the guy is dead.”

“Yeah, he didn’t look too good when I left him.”

He was watching me closely, but I couldn’t read his eyes. “That was fast. You can do something like that, that fast, with just your hands?”

I looked at him, deadpan. “No, I needed my feet, too. Where’s Midori?”

“She went out to get an electronic piano keyboard. We’re going to try playing what’s on the disk for the computer — it’s the only way to discern the patterns in the lattice.”

I frowned. “She shouldn’t be going out if we can avoid it.”

“We couldn’t avoid it. Someone had to monitor the laser and infrared and save your ass before, and she isn’t familiar with the equipment. That didn’t leave a lot of alternatives.”

“I see what you mean.”

“She knows to be careful. She’s wearing light disguise. I don’t think there’s going to be a problem.”

“Okay. Let’s listen to what you got from the transmitter.”

“Just a second — tell me you didn’t leave the van.”

“What do you think, I went back for it? I’m crazy, but not that crazy.”

He looked like a kid who’d been told that his dog just died. “Do you have any idea how much that equipment cost?”

I suppressed a smile and patted him on the shoulder. “You know I’m good for it,” I said, which was true. I sat down in front of a computer monitor and picked up a pair of headphones. “Play it,” I said.

A few mouse clicks later I was listening to Yamaoto excoriating his men in Japanese. They must have called him with the bad news when I got away. “One man! One unarmed man! And you let him get away! Useless, incompetent idiots!”

I couldn’t tell who or how many he was talking to because they were suffering his tirade in silence. There was a long pause, during which I assumed he was collecting himself, and afterward he said, “It doesn’t matter. He may not know where the disk is, and even if he does I’m not confident that you would have been able to extract the information from him. He’s obviously tougher than any of you.”

After another long pause, someone spoke up: “What would you have us do, toushu?”

“What indeed,” Yamaoto said, his voice slightly hoarse from shouting. “Focus on the girl. She is still our most promising lead.”

“But she’s underground now,” the voice said.

“Yes, but she’s unaccustomed to such a life,” Yamaoto answered. “She went into hiding suddenly, presumably having left much of the ordinary business of her life suspended. We can count on her to return to that business presently. Put men in all the vital spots of her life — where she lives, where she works, her known acquaintances, her family. Work with Holtzer on this as necessary. He has the technical means.”

Holtzer? Work with him?

“And the man?”

There was a long pause, then Yamaoto said, “The man is a different story. He lives in shadows like a fish in water. Unless we are extraordinarily lucky, I expect you have lost him.”

I could imagine heads bowed collectively in shame in the Japanese fashion. After a while one of the men spoke up: “We may spot him with the girl.”

“Yes, that’s possible. He’s obviously protecting her. We know he saved her from Ishikura’s men outside her apartment. And his reaction to my questions about her whereabouts was defensive. He may have feelings for her.” I heard him chuckle. “A strange basis for a romance.”

Ishikura? I thought.

“In any event, Rain’s loss is not fatal,” Yamaoto continued. “The girl poses much more of a danger: she is the one Ishikura Tatsuhiko will be looking for, and he has as good a chance of finding her as we do — perhaps better, judging from his speed in preempting us at her apartment. And if he finds the disk, Ishikura will know what to do with it.”

Tatsu? Tatsu is looking for the damn disk, too? Those were his men at her apartment?

“No more chances,” Yamaoto went on. “No more loose ends. When the girl resurfaces, eliminate her immediately.”

“Hai,” several voices replied in chorus.

“Unfortunately, in the absence of the disk’s return or certification of its destruction, eliminating the girl will no longer provide us with complete security. It’s time to remove Ishikura Tatsuhiko from the equation, as well.”

“But, toushu,” one of the voices said, “Ishikura is a Keisatsucho department head. Not an easy man to eliminate without causing collateral problems. Moreover . . .”

“Yes, moreover, Ishikura’s death will make him a martyr in certain circles by providing elegant supporting evidence for all his conspiracy theories. But we have no choice. Better to have evidence of such theories than what’s on the disk, which is proof itself. Do your utmost to make Ishikura’s demise seem natural. Ironic, that at the moment we need him most, the man supremely capable of such art is unavailable to us. Well, take what inspiration you can from him. Dismissed.”

That was it. I removed the headphones and looked at Harry. “It’s still transmitting?”

“Until the battery runs out — about three weeks. I’ll keep monitoring it.”

I nodded, realizing that Harry was almost certainly going to hear things from that room that would lead back to me. Hell, Yamaoto’s comments were already damning if you were smart and had context: the reference to the “strange basis” of my attachment to Midori, and to the irony of having lost the services of the man “supremely capable” of effecting death by natural causes.

“I don’t think Midori should hear what’s on that tape,” I said. “She knows enough. I don’t want to . . . compromise her further.”

Harry bowed his head and said, “I completely understand.”

All at once, I knew that he knew.

“It’s good that I can trust you,” I said. “Thank you.”

He shook his head. “Kochira koso,” he said. The same here.

The buzzer rang. Harry pressed the intercom button, and Midori said, “It’s me.”

Harry hit the entrance buzzer, and we took up our positions, this time with me at the door and Harry at the window. A minute later I saw Midori walking down the hallway with a rectangular cardboard box in her arms. Her face broke into a smile when she saw me, and she covered the distance quickly, stepped inside the genkan, and gave me a quick hug.

“Every time I see you, you look worse,” she told me, stepping back after a moment and setting the box on the floor. It was true: my face was still smudged with dirt from my tumble on the subway tracks, and I knew I looked exhausted.

“I feel worse, too,” I said, but smiling to let her know she made me feel good.

“What happened?”

“I’ll give you the details in a little while. First, Harry tells me you’re going to give us a piano recital.”

“That’s right,” she said, reaching down and stripping tape off the box. She popped open the end and slid out an electronic keyboard. “Will this work?” she said, holding it up to Harry.

Harry took it and examined the jack. “I think I’ve got an adapter here somewhere. Hang on.” He walked over to the desk, pulled open a drawer filled with electronic components, and tried several units before finding one that satisfied him. He set the keyboard down on the desk, plugged it into the computer, and brought the scanned image of the notes up onto the monitor.

“The problem is that I can’t play music and Midori can’t run the computer. I think the shortcut will be to get the computer to apply the patterns of sounds to the representation of notes on the page. Once it’s got enough data to work with, the computer will interpret the musical notes as coordinates in the lattice, then use fractal analysis until it can discern the most basic way the pattern repeats itself. Then it will apply the pattern to standard Japanese through a code-breaking algorithm I’ve set up, and we’ll be in.”

“Right,” I said. “That’s just what I was thinking.”

Harry gave me his trademark “you-are-a-complete-knuckle-dragger” look, then said, “Midori, try playing the score on the monitor and let’s see what the computer can do with the data.”

Midori sat down at the desk and lifted her fingers over the keyboard. “Wait,” Harry said. “You’ve got to play it perfectly. If you add or delete a note, or play one out of order, you’ll create a new pattern, and the computer will get confused. You have to play exactly what appears on the screen. Can you do that?”

“I could if this were an ordinary song. But this composition is unusual. I’ll need to run through it a few times first. Can you disconnect me from the computer?”

“Sure.” He dragged and clicked the mouse. “Go ahead. Tell me when you’re ready.”

Midori looked at the screen for a few moments, her head straight and motionless, her fingers rippling ever so slightly in the air, reflecting the sounds she could hear in her mind. Then she brought her hands down gently to the keys, and for the first time we heard the eerie melody of the information that had cost Kawamura his life.

I listened uncomfortably while Midori played. After a few minutes, she said to Harry, “Okay, I’m ready. Plug me in.”

Harry worked the mouse. “You’re in. Let it hear you.”

Again, Midori’s fingers floated over the keys, and the room was filled with the strange requiem. When she reached the end of the score, she stopped and looked at Harry, her eyebrows raised in a question.

“It’s got the data,” he said. “Let’s see what it can do with it.”

We watched the screen, waiting for the results, none of us speaking.

After a half minute or so, a strange, disembodied series of notes emanated from the computer speakers, shadows of what I had heard Midori play a moment earlier.

“It’s factoring the sounds,” Harry said. “It’s trying to find the most basic pattern.”

We waited silently for several minutes. Finally Harry said, “I don’t see any progress. I might not have the computing power here.”

“Where can you get it?” Midori asked.

Harry shrugged. “I can try hacking into Livermore to gain access to their supercomputer. Their security has been getting better, though — it could take some time.”

“Would a supercomputer do the trick?” I asked.

“It might,” he said. “Actually, any reasonable amount of processing power is enough. It’s a question of time, though — the more processing power, the more possibilities the computer can try in a shorter time.”

“So a supercomputer would speed things up,” Midori said, “but we don’t know by how much.”

He nodded. “That’s right.”

There was a moment of frustrated quiet. Then Harry said, “Let’s think for a moment. How much do we even need to decrypt this?”

I knew where he was going: the same tempting thought I had at Conviction headquarters when Yamaoto was asking for the disk.

“What do you mean?” Midori asked.

“Well, what are our objectives here? The disk is like dynamite; we just want to render it safe. The owners know that it can’t be copied or electronically transmitted. For starters, we could render it safe by just giving it back to them.”

“No!” Midori said, standing up from in front of the monitor and facing Harry. “My father risked his life for what’s on that disk. It’s going where he wanted it to go!”

Harry held up his hands in an “I-surrender” gesture. “Okay, okay, I’m just trying to think outside the box. Just trying to be helpful.”

“It’s a logical idea, Harry,” I said, “but Midori’s right. Not only because her father risked his life to acquire the disk. We know now that there are multiple parties seeking its return — not just Yamaoto, but also the Agency, the Keisatsucho. Maybe more. Even if we were to give it back to one of them, it wouldn’t solve our problems with the others.”

“I see your point,” Harry conceded.

“But I like your dynamite analogy. How do you render dynamite safe?”

“You detonate it somewhere safe,” Midori said, still looking at Harry.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Bulfinch,” Midori said. “Bulfinch publishes it, and that’s what makes it safe. And it’s what my father wanted.”

“Do we give it to him without even knowing for sure what’s on it?” Harry asked.

“We know well enough,” I said. “Based on what Bulfinch told us, corroborated by Holtzer. I don’t see an alternative.”

He frowned. “We don’t even know if he has the resources to decrypt it.”

I suppressed a smile at the slight hint of resentment I detected: someone was going to take away his toy, maybe solve the technopuzzle without him.

“We can assume that Forbes can access the right resources. We know how much they want what’s on that disk.”

“I’d still like a better chance at decrypting it first.”

“So would I. But we don’t know how long that would take. In the meantime we’ve got forces arrayed against us and we’re not going to be able to go on eluding them for much longer. The sooner Bulfinch publishes the damn thing, the sooner we can breathe easy again.”

Midori, not taking any chances, said, “I’ll call him.”

20

I HAD TOLD Bulfinch to meet me in Akasaka Mitsuke, one of the city’s entertainment districts, second only to Ginza in its profusion of hostess bars. The area is intersected by a myriad of alleyways, some so narrow they can only be traversed sideways, all of which offer multiple means of access and escape.

It was raining and cold as I finished an SDR and exited Akasaka Mitsuke subway station in front of the Belle Vie department store. Across the street, bizarrely pink amidst the gray rain and sky, was the battleship bulk of the Akasaka Tokyu Hotel. I paused to open the black umbrella I was carrying, then turned right onto Sotobori-dori. After a right turn into an alley by the local Citibank, I emerged onto the red crenellated brick of the Esplanade Akasaka-dori.

I was over an hour early and decided to grab a quick lunch at the Tenkaichi ramen restaurant on the Esplanade. Tenkaichi, “First Under Heaven,” is a chain, but the one on the Esplanade has character. The proprietors accept foreign currency, and the notes and coins of dozens of countries are taped to the establishment’s brown wooden walls. They also play a continuous stream of jazz compilations, occasionally interspersed by some soft American pop. And the cushioned stools, some discreetly set off in corners, offer a good view of the street in front of the restaurant.

I ordered the chukadon — Chinese vegetables over rice — and ate while I watched the street through the window. Two sarariman, taking a late lunch break, also supped alone and in silence.

I had told Bulfinch that, at 2:00, he should start circling the block counterclockwise at 19-3 Akasaka Mitsuke san-chome. There were more than a dozen alleys accessing that particular block, each with multiple tributaries, so he wouldn’t know where I’d be waiting until I made my presence known. It didn’t matter if he came early. He’d just have to keep circling the block in the rain. He didn’t know where I’d be.

I finished at 1:50, paid the check, and left. Keeping the canopy of the umbrella low over my head, I crossed the Esplanade to Misuji-dori, then cut into an alley opposite the Buon Appetito restaurant on the 19-3 block and waited under the overhang of some rusting corrugated roofing. Because of the hour and the weather, the area was quiet. I waited and watched sad drops of water falling in a slow rhythm from the rusted roof onto the tops of dilapidated plastic refuse containers beneath.

After about ten minutes I heard footsteps on the wet brick behind me, and a moment later Bulfinch appeared. He was wearing an olive trench coat and hunkering down under a large black umbrella. From where I was standing he couldn’t see me, and I waited until he had passed before speaking.

“Bulfinch. Over here,” I said quietly.

“Shit!” he said, turning to face me. “Don’t do that. You scared me.”

“You’re alone?”

“Of course. You brought the disk?”

I stepped out from under the roofing and observed the alley in both directions. All clear. “It’s nearby. Tell me what you plan to do with it.”

“You know what I plan to do. I’m a reporter. I’m going to write a series of stories with whatever’s on there as corroboration.”

“How long will that take?”

“How long? Hell, the stories are already written. All I need is the proof.”

I considered. “Let me tell you a few things about the disk,” I said, and explained about the encryption.

“Not a problem,” he said when I was done. “Forbes has a relationship with Lawrence Livermore. They’ll help us. As soon as it’s cracked, we publish.”

“You know that every day that goes by without that publication, Midori’s life is in danger.”

“Is that why you’re giving it to me? The people who want it would have paid you for it. Quite a lot, you know.”

“I want you to understand something,” I said. “If you were to fail to publish what’s on that disk, your failure might cost Midori her life. If that were to happen, I would find you, and I would kill you.”

“I believe you.”

I looked at him a moment longer, then reached into my breast pocket and took out the disk. I handed it to him and walked back to the station.

I ran an SDR to Shinbashi, thinking about Tatsu on the way. Until the contents of the disk were published, it wasn’t just Midori who was in danger, I knew; it was also Tatsu. And while Tatsu was no soft target, he wasn’t bulletproof, either. It had been a lot of years since I had seen him, but we had covered each other’s backs once. I owed him a heads-up at least.

I called the Keisatsucho from a pay phone at Shinbashi Station. “Do you know who this is?” I asked in English after they had put me through to him.

There was a long pause. “Ei, hisashiburi desu ne.” Yes, it’s been a long time. Then he switched to English — a good sign, because it meant he didn’t want the people around him to understand. “Do you know that the Keisatsucho found two bodies in Sengoku? One of them had been carrying a cane. Your fingerprints were on it. I’ve wondered from time to time whether you were still in Tokyo.”

Damn, I thought, must have grabbed the cane at some point without even realizing it. My fingerprints were on file from the time I returned to Japan after the war — I was technically a foreigner, and all foreigners in Japan get fingerprinted.

“We tried to locate you,” he went on, “but you seemed to have vanished. So I think I understand why you’re calling, but there is nothing I can do for you. The best thing you can do now is to come to the Keisatsucho. If you do, you know I will do everything I can do to help you. You make yourself look guilty by running.”

“That’s why I’m calling, Tatsu. I’ve got information about this matter that I want to give to you.”

“In exchange for what?”

“For you doing something about it. Listen to what I’m saying, Tatsu. This isn’t about me. If you act on the information I’ve got, I’ll turn myself in afterwards. I’ll have nothing to be afraid of.”

“Where and when?” he asked.

“Are we alone on this line?” I asked.

“Are you suggesting that this line could be tapped?” he asked, and I recognized the old subversive sarcasm in his voice. He was telling me to assume that it was.

“Okay, good,” I said. “Lobby of the Hotel Okura, next Saturday, noon sharp.” The Okura was a ridiculously public place to meet, and Tatsu would know that I would never seriously suggest it.

“Ah, that’s a good place,” he answered, telling me he understood. “I’ll see you then.”

“You know, Tatsu, it sounds crazy, but sometimes I miss the times we had in Vietnam. I miss those useless weekly briefings we used to have to go to — do you remember?”

The CIA head of the task force that ran the briefings invariably scheduled them for 16:30, leaving him plenty of time afterwards to chase prostitutes through Saigon. Tatsu rightly thought the guy was a joke, and wasn’t shy about pointing it out publicly.

“Yes, I remember,” he said.

“For some reason I was especially missing them just now,” I said, getting ready to give him the day to add to the time. “Wished I had one to attend tomorrow, in fact. Isn’t that strange? I’m getting nostalgic in my old age.”

“That happens.”

“Yeah, well. It’s been a long time. I’m sorry we lost touch the way we did. Tokyo’s changed so much since I first got here. We had some pretty good times back then, didn’t we? I used to love that one place we used to go to, the one where the mama-san made pottery that she used to serve the drinks in. Remember it? It’s probably not even there anymore.”

The place was in Ebisu. “It’s gone,” he said, telling me he understood.

“Well, shoganai, ne?” That’s life. “It was a good place. I think of it sometimes.”

“I strongly advise you to come in. If you do, I promise to do everything I can to help.”

“I’ll think about it. Thanks for the advice.” I hung up then, my hand lingering on the receiver, willing him to understand my cryptic message. I didn’t know what I was going to do if he didn’t.

21

THE PLACE I’D mentioned in Ebisu was a classic Japanese izakaya that Tatsu had introduced me to when I came to Japan after the war. Izakaya are tiny bars in old wooden buildings, usually run by an ageless man or woman, or a couple, who lives over the store, with only a red lantern outside the entrance to advertise their existence. Offering refuge from a demanding boss or a tedious marriage, from the tumult of the subways and the noise of the streets, izakaya serve beer and sake long into the night, as an endless procession of customers take and abandon seats at the bar, always to be replaced by another tired man coming in from the cold.

Tatsu and I had spent a lot of time at the place in Ebisu, but I had stopped going there once we lost touch. I kept meaning to drop by and check in on the mama-san, but the months had turned to years and somehow it just never happened. And now, according to Tatsu, the place wasn’t even there anymore. Probably it had been torn down. No room for a little place like that in brash, modern Tokyo.

But I remembered where it had been, and that’s where I would wait for Tatsu.

I got to Ebisu early to give myself a chance to look around. Things had really changed. So many of the wooden buildings were gone. There was a sparkling new shopping mall near the station — used to be a rice field. It made it a little hard to get my bearings.

I headed east from the station. It was a wet day, the wind blowing mist from an overcast sky.

I found the place where the izakaya had been. The dilapidated but cozy building was gone, replaced by an antiseptic-looking convenience store. I strolled past it slowly. It was empty, the sole occupant a bored-looking clerk reading a magazine under the store’s fluorescent lights. No sign of Tatsu, but I was nearly an hour early.

I wouldn’t have come back, if I’d had an alternative, once I knew the place was gone. Hell, the whole neighborhood was gone. It reminded me of the last time I’d been in the States, about five years before. I’d gone back to Dryden, the closest thing I had to a hometown. I hadn’t been back in almost twenty years, and some part of me wanted to connect again, with something.

It was a four-hour drive north from New York City. I got there, and about the only thing that was the same was the layout of the streets. I drove up the main drag, and instead of the things I remembered I saw a McDonald’s, a Benetton, a Kinko’s Copies, a Subway sandwich shop, all in gleaming new buildings. A couple of places I recognized. They were like the ruins of a lost civilization poking through dense jungle overgrowth.

I walked on, marveling at how once-pleasant memories always seemed to be rendered painful by an alchemy I could never quite comprehend.

I turned onto a side street. A small park was wedged between two nondescript buildings. A couple of young mothers were standing by one of the benches, strollers in front of them, chatting. Probably about goings-on in the neighborhood, how the kids were going to be in school soon.

I circled around behind the new shopping mall, then came back through it, along a wide outdoor esplanade bright with chrome and glass. It was a pretty structure, I had to admit. A couple of high-school kids passed me, laughing. They looked comfortable, like they belonged there.

I saw a figure in an old gray trench coat coming toward me from the other end of the plaza, and although I couldn’t make out the face I recognized the gait, the posture. It was Tatsu, sucking a little warmth from a cigarette, otherwise ignoring the damp day.

He saw me and waved, tossing away the cigarette. As he came closer I saw that his face was more deeply lined than I remembered, a weariness somehow closer to the surface.

“Honto ni, shibaraku buri da na,” I said, offering him a bow. It has been a long time. He extended his hand, and I shook it.

He was looking at me closely, no doubt seeing the same lines on my face that I saw on his, and perhaps something more. This was the first time Tatsu had seen me since my plastic surgery. He must have been wondering at how age seemed to have hidden the Caucasian in my features. I wondered if he suspected something besides the passage of time behind my changed appearance.

“Rain-san, ittai, what have you done this time?” he asked, still looking at me. “Do you know how much trouble it will mean if someone finds out that I’ve met you without arresting you? You are a suspect in a double murder. In which one of the victims was well connected in the LDP. I am under substantial pressure to solve this, you know.”

“Tatsu, aren’t you even going to tell me it’s good to see me? I have feelings, you know.”

He smiled his sorrowful smile. “You know it’s good to see you. But I would wish for different circumstances.”

“How are your daughters?”

The smile broadened, and he nodded his head proudly. “Very fine. One doctor. One lawyer. Luckily they have their mother’s brains, ne?”

“Married?”

“The older is engaged.”

“Congratulations. Sounds like you’ll be a grandfather soon.”

“Not too soon,” he said, the smile evaporating, and I thought I’d hate to be the kid Tatsu caught fooling around with one of his daughters.

We headed back across the mall, past a perfect reproduction French château that looked homesick in its current surroundings.

The small talk done, I got to the point. “Yamaoto Toshi, head of Conviction, has put a contract out on your life,” I told him.

He stopped walking and looked at me. “How do you know this?”

“Sorry, no questions about how.”

He nodded. “Your source must be credible, or you wouldn’t be telling me.”

“Yes.”

We started walking again. “You know, Rain-san, there are a lot of people who would like to see me dead. Sometimes I wonder how I’ve managed to keep breathing for all this time.”

“Maybe you’ve got a guardian angel.”

He laughed. “I wish that were so. Actually, the explanation is simpler. My death would establish my credibility. Alive, I can be dismissed as a fool, a chaser of phantoms.”

“I’m afraid circumstances have changed.”

He stopped again and looked at me closely. “I didn’t know you were mixed up with Yamaoto.”

“I’m not.”

He was nodding his head, and I knew that he was adding this bit of data to his profile of the mysterious assassin.

He started walking again. “You were saying. ‘Circumstances have changed.’ ”

“There’s a disk. My understanding is that it contains information implicating various politicians in massive corruption. Yamaoto is trying to get it.”

He knew something about the disk — I’d heard Yamaoto saying on the transmitter that Tatsu had sent men to Midori’s apartment, after all — yet he said nothing.

“You know anything about this, Tatsu?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I’m a cop. I know a little about everything.”

“Yamaoto thinks you know a lot. He knows you’re after that disk. He’s having trouble getting it back, so he’s trying to eliminate loose ends.”

“Why is he having trouble getting the disk back?”

“He doesn’t know where it is.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t have it.”

“That is not what I asked you.”

“Tatsu, this isn’t about the disk. I came here because I learned that you’re in danger. I wanted to warn you.”

“But the missing disk is the reason I’m in danger, is it not?” he said, affecting a puzzled, innocent look that would have fooled someone who didn’t know him. “Find the disk; remove the danger.”

“Ease up on the inakamono routine,” I said, telling him I knew he wasn’t a country bumpkin. “I’ll tell you this much. The person who has the disk is in a position to publish what’s on it. That should remove the danger, as you put it.”

He stopped and grabbed my arm. “Masaka, tell me you didn’t give that fucking disk to Bulfinch.”

Alarm bells started going off in my head.

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because Franklin Bulfinch was murdered yesterday in Akasaka Mitsuke, outside the Akasaka Tokyu Hotel.”

“Fuck!” I said, momentarily forgetting myself.

“Komatta,” he swore again. “You gave it to him, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Damn it! Did he have it with him when he was killed?”

Outside the Akasaka Tokyu — a hundred meters from where I gave it to him. “What time did it happen?” I asked.

“Early afternoon. Maybe two o’clock. Did he have it with him?”

“Almost certainly,” I told him.

His shoulders slumped, and I knew he wasn’t playacting.

“Damn it, Tatsu. How do you know about the disk?”

There was a long pause before he answered. “Because Kawamura was supposed to give the disk to me.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

“Yes,” he went on, “I had been developing Kawamura for quite some time. I had strongly encouraged him to provide me with the information that is now on that disk. It seems that, in the end, everyone trusts a reporter more than a cop. Kawamura decided to give the disk to Bulfinch instead.”

“How do you know?”

“Kawamura called me the morning he died.”

“What did he say?”

He looked at me, deadpan. “ ‘Fuck off. I’m giving the disk to the Western media.’ It’s my fault, really. In my eagerness, I’d been putting too much pressure on him. I’m sure he found it unpleasant.”

“How did you know it was Bulfinch?”

“If you wanted to give this kind of information to someone in the ‘Western media,’ who would you go to? Bulfinch is well known for his reporting on corruption. But I couldn’t be sure until this morning, when I learned of his murder. And I wasn’t completely certain until just now.”

“So this is why you’ve been following Midori.”

“Of course.” Tatsu has a dry way of saying “of course” that always seems to emphasize some lack of mental acuity on the part of the listener. “Kawamura died almost immediately after he called me, meaning it was likely that he was unable to deliver the disk to the ‘Western media’ as planned. His daughter had his things. She was a logical target.”

“That’s why you were investigating the break-in at her father’s apartment.”

He looked at me disapprovingly. “My men performed that break-in. We were looking for the disk.”

“Two chances to look for it — the break-in, and then the investigation,” I said, admiring his efficiency. “Convenient.”

“Not convenient enough. We couldn’t find it. This is why we turned our attention to the daughter.”

“You and everyone else.”

“You know, Rain-san,” he said, “I had a man following her in Omotesando. He had a most unlikely accident in the bathroom of a local bar. His neck was broken.”

Christ, that was Tatsu’s man. So maybe Benny had been serious about giving me forty-eight hours to accept the Midori assignment. Not that it mattered anymore. “Really,” I said.

“On the same night I had men waiting at the daughter’s apartment. Despite being armed, they were ambushed and overcome by a single man.”

“Embarrassing,” I said, waiting for more.

He took out a cigarette, studied it for a moment, then placed it in his mouth and lit it. “Academic,” he said, exhaling a cloud of gray smoke. “It’s over. The CIA has the disk now.”

“Why do you say that? What about Yamaoto?”

“I have means of knowing that Yamaoto is still searching for the disk. There is only one other player in this drama, besides me. That player must have taken the disk from Bulfinch.”

“If you’re talking about Holtzer, he’s working with Yamaoto.”

He smiled the sad smile. “Holtzer isn’t working with Yamaoto, he’s Yamaoto’s slave. And, like most slaves, he’s looking for a way to escape.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Yamaoto controls Holtzer through blackmail, as he controls all his puppets. But Holtzer is playing a double game. He plans to use that disk to bring Yamaoto down, to cut the puppet master’s strings.”

“So Holtzer hasn’t told Yamaoto that the Agency has the disk.”

He shrugged. “As I said, Yamaoto is still looking for it.”

“Tatsu,” I said quietly, “what’s on that disk?”

He took a tired pull on his cigarette, then blew the smoke skyward. “Videos of extramarital sexual acts, audio of bribes and payoffs, numbers of secret accounts, records of illegal real estate transactions and money laundering.”

“Implicating Yamaoto?”

He looked at me as though wondering how I could be so slow. “Rain-san, you were a great soldier, but you would make a very shitty cop. Implicating everyone but Yamaoto.”

I was silent for a moment while I tried to connect the dots. “Yamaoto uses this information as blackmail?”

“Of course,” he replied in his dry way. “Why do you think we have had nothing but failed administration after failed administration? Eleven prime ministers in as many years? Every one of them has either been an LDP flunky or a reformer who is immediately co-opted and defused. This is Yamaoto, governing from the shadows.”

“But he’s not even part of the LDP.”

“He doesn’t want to be. He is much more effective governing as he does. When a politician displeases him, incriminating information is released, the media is instructed to magnify it, and the offending politician is disgraced. The scandal reflects only on the LDP, not on Conviction.”

“How does he get his information?”

“An extensive system of wiretaps, video surveillance, and accomplices. Every time he traps someone new, the victim becomes complicit and assists him in furthering his network of blackmail.”

“Why would they help him?”

“Carrot and stick. Yamaoto of course has on his payroll a number of young women sufficiently beautiful to make even the most faithfully married politician temporarily forget himself. Say he has one of his people videotape a member of Parliament engaging in an embarrassing sexual act with one of these women. The politician is then shown the videotape and told that it will be kept in confidence in exchange for his vote on certain measures, typically affecting public-works spending, and for his cooperation in entrapping his colleagues. If the politician has a conscience, he won’t want to vote in favor of these ridiculous public projects, but his fear of exposure is now a much more significant motivator than his conscience would ever have been. As for entrapping his colleagues, there is some psychology at work: by making others dirty, he feels less dirty by comparison. And because elections are decided in Japan not by a politician’s voting record but by his access to money, Yamaoto offers an enormous slush fund that the politician can use to fund his next election campaign. Yamaoto gives generously: once a politician is part of his network, it is in his interest to see that person reelected, to advance the politician’s career. Yamaoto’s influence runs so deep that, if you’re not part of his network, you can’t get anything done and anyway you’ll be defeated in the next election by being outspent by one of his puppets.”

“With all that power, why have I never heard of him?”

“Yamaoto does not reveal the source of the pressure being applied. His victims know only that they are being blackmailed, not by whom. Most of them believe it is the work of one or another LDP faction. And why not? Every time Yamaoto determines that a scandal is in his interest, the LDP becomes the focus of the country’s attention. Ironic, isn’t it? Yamaoto manages things so that even the LDP believes the LDP is the power. But there is a power behind the power.”

I thought of the reports I’d been tracking, of Tatsu’s conspiracy theories. “But you’ve been focusing on corruption in the LDP yourself, Tatsu.”

His eyes narrowed. “How would you know that?”

I smiled. “Just because we’ve fallen out of touch doesn’t mean I’ve lost interest.”

He took another drag on the cigarette. “Yes, I focus on corruption in the LDP,” he said, the smoke jetting down from his nostrils. “Yamaoto is amused by this. He believes it serves his ends. And it would, if any of my reports were taken seriously. But only Yamaoto decides when corruption is to be prosecuted.” There was a bitter set to his mouth as he said it.

I couldn’t help but smile at him — the same wily bastard I knew in Vietnam. “But you’ve been playing possum. Your real goal is Yamaoto.”

He shrugged.

“Now I understand why you wanted that disk,” I said.

“You knew of my involvement, Rain-san. Why didn’t you contact me?”

“I had reason not to.”

“Yes?”

“Midori,” I said. “If I’d given it to you, Yamaoto would still think it was missing, and he would keep coming after Midori. Publication was the only way to make her safe.”

“Is this the only reason you were reluctant to contact me?”

I looked at him, wary. “I can’t think of anything else. Can you?”

His only response was the sad smile.

We walked for a moment in silence, then I asked, “How did Yamaoto get to Holtzer?”

“By offering him what every man wants.”

“Which is?”

“Power, of course. How do you think that Holtzer rose so quickly through the ranks to become chief of Tokyo Station?”

“Yamaoto’s been feeding him information?”

“Of course. It is my understanding that Mr. Holtzer has been notably successful at developing assets in Japan. And as chief of station in Tokyo, he has been responsible for producing certain critical intelligence reports — particularly regarding corruption in the Japanese government, on which Yamaoto is of course an expert.”

“Christ, Tatsu, the quality of your information is almost scary.”

“What is scary is how useless the information has always been to me.”

“Holtzer knows that he’s being played?”

He shrugged. “At first, he thought he was developing Yamaoto. Once he realized that the opposite was true, what were his options? Tell the CIA that the assets he had developed were plants, the reports all fabricated? That would have meant the end of his career. The alternative was much more pleasant: work for Yamaoto, who continues to feed him the ‘intelligence’ that makes Holtzer a star. And Yamaoto has his mole inside the CIA.”

Holtzer, a mole, I thought, disgusted. I should have known.

“Holtzer told me that the CIA had been developing Kawamura, that Kawamura was on his way to deliver the disk to the Agency when he died.”

He shrugged. “Kawamura screwed me. He might have screwed the Agency, as well. Impossible to say, and irrelevant.”

“What about Bulfinch,” I asked. “How did Holtzer get to him?”

“By having him followed until you handed over the disk, of course. Bulfinch was a soft target, Rain-san.” I heard the soft note of criticism in his voice — telling me it was stupid to give the disk to a civilian.

We walked silently again for a few minutes. Then he said, “Rain-san. What have you been doing in Japan all this time? Since the last time we met.”

With Tatsu, it was a mistake to assume that anything was small talk. A small warning bell went off somewhere in my consciousness.

“Nothing terribly new,” I said. “The same consulting work as before.”

“What was that, again?”

“You know. Helping a few U.S. companies find ways to import their products into Japan. Get around the red tape, find the right partners, that sort of thing.”

“It sounds interesting. What sort of products?”

Tatsu ought to have known better than to think a few simple questions would crack my cover story. The consulting business, the clients, they’re all real, albeit not exactly Fortune 500 stuff.

“Why don’t you check out my Web site?” I asked him. “There’s a section full of client references on it.”

He waved his hand in a “don’t-be-silly” gesture. “What I mean is, What are you still doing in Japan? Why are you still here?”

“What difference does it make, Tatsu?”

“I don’t understand. I would like to.”

What could I tell him? I needed to stay at war. A shark can’t stop swimming, or it dies.

But it was more than that, I had to admit to myself. Sometimes I hate living here. Even after twenty-five years, I’m still an outsider, and I resent it. And it’s not just my profession that militates a life in shadows. It’s also that, despite my native features, my native linguistic level, what matters in the end is that inside I am half gaijin. A cruel teacher once said to me when I was a kid, “What do you get when you mix clean water with dirty water? Dirty water.” It took several additional years of slights and rejection before I figured out what she meant: that I’m marked by an indelible stain that the shadows can conceal but never wash away.

“You’ve been here for over two decades,” Tatsu said, gently. “Maybe it’s time for you to go home.”

He knows, I thought. Or he’s on the verge. “I wonder where that is,” I said.

He spoke slowly. “There is a risk that, if you stay, we could learn we have opposing interests.”

“Let’s not learn that, then.”

I saw the sad smile. “We can try.”

We walked again, the sky brooding above us.

Something occurred to me. I stopped walking and looked at him. “It might not be over,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“The disk. Maybe we can still get it back.”

“How?”

“It can’t be copied or transmitted electronically. And it’s encrypted. Holtzer is going to need expertise to decrypt it. Either he has to take the disk to the experts, or the experts will have to come to him.”

He paused for only a second before taking out his cell phone. He input a number, raised the unit to his ear, and waited.

“I need a schedule for visiting American government personnel,” he said in curt Japanese into the phone. “Particularly anyone declared from the NSA or CIA. For the next week, particularly the next few days. Right away. Yes, I’ll wait.”

The U.S. and Japanese governments declare their high-level spooks to each other as part of their security treaty and general intelligence cooperation. It was a long shot, but it was something.

And I knew Holtzer. He was a grandstander. He’d be billing the disk as the intelligence coup of the century. He’d be sure to hand it over himself to ensure that he received full credit.

We waited silently for a few minutes, then Tatsu said, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Understood. Wait a minute.”

He held the phone against his chest and said, “NSA software cryptography specialist, declared to the Japanese government. And the CIA director of East Asian Affairs. Both arriving from Washington tonight at Narita. I don’t believe this is a coincidence. Holtzer must have had them moving as soon as he got the disk.”

“Where are they going? The embassy?”

“Hold on.” He put the phone back to his ear. “Find out whether they’ve requested a diplomatic escort, and if so where they’re going. I’ll wait.”

He put the phone back to his chest. “The Keisatsucho receives many requests for escorts of U.S. government personnel,” he said. “The government people don’t have the budget to pay for sedan service, so they use us on the pretext of diplomatic security. This may be the first time I won’t find this habit annoying.”

He put the phone back to his ear, and we waited. After a few minutes he said, “Good. Good. Wait.” The phone went back to his chest. “Yokosuka U.S. Naval Base. Thursday morning, straight from the Narita Airport Hilton.”

“We’ve got him, then.”

His expression was grim. “How, exactly?”

“Hell, stop Holtzer’s car, take the disk, declare him persona non grata for all I care.”

“On what evidence, exactly? The prosecutors would want to know.”

“Hell, I don’t know. Tell them it was an anonymous source.”

“You’re missing the point. What you’ve told me is not evidence. It’s hearsay.”

“Christ, Tatsu,” I said, exasperated, “when did you turn into such a damn bureaucrat?”

“It isn’t a matter of bureaucracy,” he said sharply, and I wished I hadn’t let my temper flare. “It’s a question of using the proper tools to get the job done. What you are suggesting would be useless.”

I reddened. Somehow, Tatsu could always make me feel like a lumbering, thickheaded gaijin. “Well, if we can’t go through channels, what do you propose instead?”

“I can get the disk and protect Midori. But you will need to be involved.”

“What do you propose?”

“I will arrange to have Holtzer’s car stopped outside the naval facility, perhaps on the pretext of needing to examine its undercarriage for explosive devices.” He looked at me dryly. “Perhaps an anonymous call could warn us of such an attempt.”

“Really,” I said.

He shrugged and intoned a phone number, which I wrote down on my hand, reversing the last four numbers and subtracting two from each of them. When I was done, he said, “An officer will of course have to ask the driver to lower his window to explain.”

I nodded, seeing where he was going. “Here’s my pager number,” I said, and gave it to him. “Use it to contact me when you’ve acquired the information on Holtzer’s movements. Input a phone number, then five-five-five, so I’ll know it’s you. I’m going to need some equipment, too — a flashbang.” Flashbang grenades are just what they sound like: no shrapnel, just a big noise and a flash of light, so they temporarily disorient, rather than kill and maim. Antiterrorist units use them to stun the occupants of a room before kicking down the door and shooting the bad guys.

I didn’t have to tell him what the flashbang was for. “How can I get it to you?” he asked.

“The fountain at Hibiya Park,” I answered, improvising. “Drop it in on the side facing Hibiya-dori. Right up at the edge, like this.” I drew a diagram on my hand to ensure that he understood. “Page me when you emplace it so it doesn’t stay insecure for too long.”

“All right.”

“One more thing,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Warn your people. I don’t want anyone shooting at me by mistake.”

“I will do my best.”

“Do better than your best. It’s my ass that’s going to get shot at.”

“It’s both our asses,” he said, his voice level. “If you are unsuccessful, I can assure you that there will be an inquiry into who ordered that the car be stopped, and under what pretext. If I am lucky, under such circumstances, I will merely have to take early retirement. If I am less than lucky, I will go to prison.”

He had a point, although I didn’t think he would have accepted an offer to trade my risk for his. Not that it was worth arguing over.

“You just stop the car,” I told him. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

He nodded, then bowed with unsettling formality.

“Good luck, Rain-san,” he said, and walked off into the gathering darkness.

22

I LOVE TOKYO at night. It’s the lights, I think: more than the architecture, more, even, than its sounds and scents, the lights are what animate the city’s nocturnal spirit. There is brightness: streets alight with neon, with the urgent blinking of constellations of pachinko parlors, streets where the store windows and the headlights of a thousand passing cars illuminate the pavement as brightly as the halogen lamps of a night baseball game. And there is gloom: alleys lit by nothing more than the fluorescent glow of a lonely vending machine, left leaning against the worn brick like an old man who’s given up on everything and wants only to catch his breath, streets lit only by the yellowish pall of lamplights spaced so widely that a passing figure and his shadow seem to evaporate in the dim spaces between.

I walked the gloomy backstreets of Ebisu after Tatsu departed, heading toward the Imperial Hotel in Hibiya, where I would stay until this thing was over. For near-suicidal audacity, what I was about to do would rank with any of the missions I had undertaken during my days with SOG, or with those of the mercenary conflicts that came after. I wondered if Tatsu’s bow was some kind of epitaph.

Well, you’ve survived missions before that ought to have been your last, I thought, letting loose a memory.

After our rampage in Cambodia, things started going bad for my unit. Up until then the killing had been pretty impersonal. You get into a firefight, you’re just aiming at tracer rounds, you can’t even see the people who are firing back at you. Maybe later you’ll find blood or brains, maybe some bodies. Or we’d hear one of the claymore booby traps we’d laid go off a klik or two away, and know we’d nailed someone. But the thing we did at Cu Lai was different. It affected us.

I knew what we had done was wrong, but I rationalized by saying hey, we’re at war; wrong things happen in wars. Some of the other guys got morose, guilt making them gun-shy. Crazy Jake — Jimmy — went the opposite way. He locked himself even tighter into the war’s embrace.

Crazy Jake was fanatically loyal to his Yards — short for Montagnards — and they responded to that. When a Yard was lost in a firefight, Jake would deliver the bad news personally to the village chief. He eschewed army barracks, preferring to sleep in the Yard quarters. He learned their language and their customs, participated in their ceremonies and rituals. Plus, the Yards believed in magic — the villages had their own sorcerers — and a man with Jake’s killing record walked with a powerful aura.

All this made the brass uncomfortable, because they didn’t command the Yards’ respect. The problem got worse when we were assigned to beef up the fortified hamlets at Bu Dop, on the Cambodian border, because it exposed Crazy Jake to more of the indigenous population.

Frustrated with the rules of engagement set by the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, and with MACV’s inability to root out the mole who was compromising SOG’s operations, Jake started using Bu Dop as a staging ground for independent missions against the Vietcong in Cambodia. The Yards hated the Vietnamese because the Vietnamese had been shitting on them throughout history, and they were happy to follow Crazy Jake on his lethal forays. But SOG was being disbanded, and Vietnamization — that is, turning the war over to the Vietnamese so that America could back out — was the order of the day. MACV told him to shut off the Cambodian ops, but Jake refused — said it was just part of defending his hamlets.

So MACV recalled him to Saigon. Jake ignored them. A detachment was sent in to retrieve him, and never returned. This was even more spooky than if they had been slaughtered, their severed heads run up on pikes. Did they turn and join Crazy Jake? Did he have that much magic? Did he just disappear them into thin air?

So they cut off his supplies. No more weapons, no more materiel. But Jake wouldn’t cease and desist. MACV figured out that he was selling poppy to finance his operation. Jake had become his own universe. He had a self-sustaining, highly effective, fanatically loyal private army.

MACV knew about Jimmy and me; they had the personnel files. They brought me in one day. “You’re going to have to go in there and get him,” they told me. “He’s selling drugs now, he’s going unauthorized into Cambodia, he’s out of control. This is a public-relations fiasco if it gets out.”

“I don’t think I can get him out. He’s not listening to anyone,” I said.

“We didn’t say, ‘get him out.’ We just said, ‘get him,’ ” they told me.

There were three of them. Two MACV, one CIA. I was shaking my head. The guy from the agency spoke up.

“Do what we’re asking, and you’ve got a ticket home.”

“I’ll get home when I get home,” I said, but I wondered.

He shrugged. “We’ve got two choices here. One is, we carpet-bomb every hamlet in Bu Dop. That’s about a thousand friendlies, plus Calhoun. We’ll just emulsify everyone. It’s not a problem.

“Two is, you do what’s right and save all those people, and you’re on a plane the next day. Personally, I don’t give a shit.” He turned and walked out.

I told them I would do it. They were going to grease him anyway. Even if they didn’t, I saw what he had become. I had seen it happen to a lot of guys, although Jimmy was the worst. They went over there, and found out that killing was what they were best at. Do you tell people? Do you put on your resume, “Ninety confirmed kills. Large collection of human ears. Ran private army”? C’mon, you’re never going to fit in the real world again. You’re marked forever, you can’t go back.

I went in, told the Yards that I wanted to see Crazy Jake. I was known from the missions we had run together, so they took me to him. I didn’t have a weapon; it was okay.

“Hey, Jimmy,” I said when I saw him. “Long time no see.”

“John John,” he greeted me. He had always called me that. “You come in here to join me? It’s about time. We’re the only outfit in this fucking war that the V.C. is actually afraid of. We don’t have to fight with one arm tied behind our balls by a bunch of no-load politicians.”

We spent some time catching up. By the time I told him they were going to bomb him it was already night.

“I figured they would, sooner or later,” he said. “I can’t fight that. Yeah, I figured this was coming.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Don’t know. But I can’t make the Yards my hostages. Even if I could, fuckers’d bomb them anyway.”

“Why don’t you just walk out?”

He gave me a sly look. “I don’t fancy going to jail, John John. Not after leading the good life here in the Central Highlands.”

“Well, you’re in a tight spot. I don’t know what to tell you.”

He nodded his head, then said, “You supposed to kill me, man?”

“Yeah,” I told him.

“So do it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’ve got no way out. They’re going to vaporize my people otherwise, I know that. And I’d rather it be you than some guy I don’t know, dropping a seven hundred and fifty-pound bomb from thirty-thousand feet up. You’re my blood brother, man.”

I still didn’t say anything.

“I love these people,” he said. “I really love them. Do you know how many of them have died for me? Because they know I would die for them.”

These were not just words. It’s hard for a civilian to understand the depth of trust, the depth of love, that can develop between men in combat.

“My Yards won’t be happy with you. They really love me, the crazy fucks. Think I’m a magic man. But you’re pretty slippery. You’ll get away.”

“I just want to go home,” I said.

He laughed. “There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done. It doesn’t work that way. Here.” He handed me a side arm. “Don’t worry about me. Save my Yards.”

I thought of the recruiter, the one who’d given us twenty bucks to pay some woman to sign us into the army as our mother.

“Save my Yards,” Jimmy said again.

I thought of Deirdre saying, Watch out for Jimmy, okay?

He picked up a CAR-15, a submachine gun version of the ubiquitous M-16 with a folding stock and shortened barrel, and popped in a magazine. Clicked off the safety so I could see him do it.

“C’mon, John John. I’m not going to keep asking so nicely.”

I remembered him putting out his hand after I had fought him to a standstill, saying You’re all right. What’s your name?

John Rain, fuckface, I had answered, and we had fought again.

The CAR-15 was swinging toward me.

I thought of the swimming hole near Dryden, how you had to just forget about everything else and jump.

“Last chance,” Jimmy was saying. “Last chance.”

Do what we’re asking and you’ve got a ticket home.

There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done.

I raised the pistol quickly, smoothly, chest level, double-tapping the trigger in the same motion. The two slugs slammed through his chest and blew out his back. Jimmy was dead before he hit the floor.

Two Yards burst into Jimmy’s hooch but I had already picked up the CAR. I cut them down and ran.

Their security was outward facing. They weren’t well prepared to stop someone going from the inside out. And they were shocked, demoralized, at losing Jimmy.

I took some shrapnel from an exploding claymore. The wounds were minor, but back at base they told me, “Okay, soldier, that’s your million-dollar wound. You’re going home now.” They put me on a plane, and seventy-two hours later I was back in Dryden.

The body came back two days later. There was a funeral. Jimmy’s parents were crying, Deirdre was crying. “Oh God, John, I knew, I knew he wasn’t going to make it back. Oh God,” she was saying.

Everyone wanted to know how Jimmy had died. I told them he died in a firefight. That was all I knew. Near the border.

I left town a day later. Didn’t say good-bye to any of them. Jimmy was right, there was no home after what we had done. “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” I think some poet said.

I tell myself it’s karma, the great wheels of the universe grinding on. A lifetime ago I killed my girl’s brother. Now I take out a guy, next thing I know I’m involved with his daughter. If it were happening to someone else, I’d think it was funny.

I had called the Imperial before the meeting with Tatsu and made a reservation. I keep a few things stored at the hotel in case of a rainy day: a couple of suits, identity papers, currency, concealed weapons. The hotel people think I’m an expat Japanese who visits Japan frequently, and I pay them to keep my things so I don’t have to carry them back and forth every time I travel. I even stay there periodically to back up the story.

The Imperial is centrally located and has a great bar. More important, it’s big enough to be as anonymous as a love hotel, if you know how to play it.

I had just reached Hibiya Station on the Hibiya line when my pager went off. I pulled it from my belt and saw a number I didn’t recognize, but followed by the 5-5-5 that told me it was Tatsu.

I found a pay phone and input the number. The other side picked up on the first ring. “Secure line?” Tatsu’s voice asked.

“Secure enough.”

“The two visitors are leaving Narita at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow. It’s a ninety-minute ride to where they’re going. Our man might get there before them, though, so you’ll need to be in position early, just outside.”

“Okay. The package?”

“Being emplaced right now. You can pick it up in an hour.”

“Will do.”

Silence. Then: “Good luck.”

Dead line.

I reinserted the phone card and called the number Tatsu had given me in Ebisu. Whispering to disguise my voice, I warned the person on the other end of the line that there would be a bomb on the undercarriage of a diplomatic vehicle visiting the Yokosuka Naval Base tomorrow. That should slow things up in front of the guardhouse.

I had showered at Harry’s before going to meet Tatsu, but I still looked pretty rough when I checked in at the hotel. No one seemed to notice my sleeve, wet from fishing Tatsu’s package out of the fountain at the park. Anyway, I had just flown in from the East Coast of the United States — long trip, anything can happen. The attendant at the front desk laughed when I told him I was getting too old for this shit.

My things were already waiting for me in the room, the shirts pressed and the suits hung neatly. I bolted the door and sat down on the bed, then checked a false compartment in the suitcase they had brought up, where I saw the dull gleam of the Glock. I opened up the toiletry kit, took out the rounds I wanted from a dummy can of deodorant, loaded the gun, and slipped it between the mattress and the box spring.

At nine o’clock the phone rang. I picked it up, recognized Midori’s voice, and told her the room number.

A minute later there was a quiet knock at the door. I got up and looked through the peephole. The light in the room was off, so the person on the other side wouldn’t know whether the occupant was checking to see who was out there. Leaving the light on can make you a nice target for a shotgun blast.

It was Midori, as expected. I let her in and bolted the door behind her. When I turned toward her, she was looking around the room. “Hey, it’s about time we stayed in a place like this,” she said. “Those love hotels can get old.”

“But they have their advantages,” I said, putting my arms around her.

We ordered a dinner of sashimi and hot sake from the room-service menu, and while we waited for it to arrive I filled Midori in on my meeting with Tatsu, told her the bad news about Bulfinch.

The food arrived, and, when the hotel employee who brought it had left, Midori said, “I have to ask you something a little . . . silly. Is that okay?”

I looked at her, and felt my gut twist at the honesty in her eyes. “Sure.”

“I’ve been thinking about these people. They killed Bulfinch. They tried to kill you and me. They must have wanted to kill my father. Do you think . . . did he really have a heart attack?”

I poured sake from the ceramic flask into two small matching cups, watching wisps of steam rise from the surface. My hands were steady. “Your question isn’t silly. There are ways of killing someone that make it look like an accident, or like natural causes. And I agree that, based on what they learned of your father’s activities, they certainly would have wanted him dead.”

“He was afraid they were going to kill him. He told me.”

“Yes.”

She was drumming her fingers on the table, playing a furious tune on an imaginary piano. There was a cold fire in her eyes. “I think they killed him,” she said, nodding.

There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done. “You may be right,” I said, quietly.

Did she know? Or did her mind refuse to go where instinct wanted to take her? I couldn’t tell.

“What matters is that your father was a brave man,” I said, my voice slightly thick. “And that, regardless of how he died, he shouldn’t have died in vain. That’s why I have to get that disk back. Why I have to finish what your father started. I really . . .” I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. “I really want to do that. I need to do it.”

Warring emotions crossed her face like the shadows of fast-moving clouds. “I don’t want you to,” she said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s less dangerous than it seems. My friend is going to make sure that the police who are there know what’s going on, so no one is going to take a shot at me.” I hoped.

“What about the CIA people? You can’t control them.”

I thought about that. Tatsu had probably already figured that if I got killed on the way in, he would use it as an excuse to order everyone out of the car, search for weapons, and find the disk that way. He was a practical guy.

“Nobody’s going to shoot me. The way I’ve got it set up, they won’t even know what’s going on until it’s too late.”

“I thought that, in war, nothing goes according to plan.”

I laughed. “That’s true. I’ve made it this far by being a good improviser.”

I took a swallow of sake. “Anyway, we’re about out of alternatives,” I said, enjoying the feeling of the hot liquid spreading through my abdomen. “Yamaoto doesn’t know that Holtzer has the disk, so he’s going to keep coming after you if we don’t get it back. And after me, too.”

We ate for a few minutes in silence. Then she looked at me and said, “It makes sense, but it’s still terrible.” Her voice was bitter.

I wanted to tell her that eventually you get used to terrible things that make sense. But I said nothing.

She stood up and wandered over to the window. Her back was to me, the glow through the window silhouetting her. I watched her for a moment, then got up and walked over, feeling the carpet taking the weight of my feet. I stopped close enough to smell the clean smell of her hair, and some other, more exotic scent, and slowly, slowly let my hands rise so that my fingertips were just touching her shoulders and arms.

Then my fingertips gave way to my hands, and when my hands made their way to her hips she eased back into me. Her hands found mine and together they rose up, covering her belly and stroking it in such a way that I couldn’t tell who was initiating the movement.

Standing there with her, looking out the window over Tokyo, I felt the weight of what I would face in the morning drift slowly away from me. I had the exhilarating realization that there was nowhere, nowhere on the whole planet, that I would rather have been right then. The city around us was a living thing: the million lights were its eyes; the laughter of lovers its voice; the expressways and factories its muscles and sinews. And I was there at its pulsing heart.

Just a little more time, I thought, kissing her neck, her ear. A little more time at an anonymous hotel where we could float untethered from the past, free of all the things that I knew would soon end my fragile bond with this woman.

I became increasingly aware of the sound of her breathing, the taste of her skin, and my languid sense of the city and our place in it faded. She turned and kissed me, softly, then harder, her hands on my face, under my shirt, the heat from her touch spreading through my torso like ripples on water.

We tumbled onto the bed, stripping off each other’s clothes, tossing them helter-skelter to the floor. Her back was arched upward and I was kissing her breasts, her belly, and she said, “No, now, I want you now,” and I moved up, feeling her legs on either side of me, and into her. She made a sound like the wind picking up, and we moved against each other, with each other, slowly at first, then more urgently. We were fused together, breathing the breath from each other’s lungs, the sensation arcing from my head to my groin to my toes and back again until I couldn’t tell where my body ended and hers began. I felt a rumbling between us and in us like storm clouds rolling in and when I came it was like a thunderclap from everywhere, her body and my body and all the places where we were joined.

We lay there afterward, still entwined, exhausted as though we had done battle but had failed to vanquish each other with our last and mightiest blows. “Sugoi,” she said. “What did they put in the sake?”

I smiled at her. “You want to get another bottle?”

“A lot of bottles,” she said, drowsily. And that was the last thing either of us said before I drifted off into a sleep that was mercifully untroubled by memories and only slightly marred by dread of what was still to come.

23

I GOT UP just before dawn, and stood looking out the window as the lights came on in Tokyo and the city slowly emerged from its slumber, dreamily stretching its fingers and toes. Midori was still sleeping.

I showered and dressed in one of the suits I keep at the Imperial, an eleven-ounce gray flannel from Paul Stuart. A white Sea Island cotton shirt, conservative blue tie. The shoes were bench made, the well-seasoned attaché from a tragically defunct British leather-goods manufacturer called W. H. Gidden. I was dressed better than most people who are supposed to look the part — again, the details are what make the disguise, or give you away. And who knows? I thought. If this doesn’t go well, you could be buried in this outfit. You might as well look good.

Midori had gotten up while I was in the shower. She was wearing a white terry-cloth hotel robe and sat on the bed silently while I dressed. “I like you in a suit,” she told me when I was done. “You look good.”

“Just a sarariman on his way to work,” I said, trying to keep it light.

I slipped the Glock into a custom holster at the small of my back, where it would be concealed by the nice drape of the flannel. Then I eased the flashbang up under my armpit above the sleeve of the suit, where the natural compression of my arm held it in place. I moved my arm out a few centimeters and jiggled it hard, and the device slid down into my waiting hand. Satisfied, I put it back in position.

I rotated my head and heard the joints in my neck crack. “Okay. I’ve got to go. I’ll be back sometime in the evening. Will you wait for me?”

She nodded, her face set. “I’ll be here. Just come back.”

“I will.” I picked up the attaché and left.

The hotel lobby was relatively empty of the visiting businessmen who would soon arise and meet for overpriced power breakfasts. I walked out through the front doors and shook my head at the bellman’s offer to assist me with a cab, preferring instead an indirect walk to Tokyo Station, which would give me the chance to ensure that I wasn’t being followed. From the station I would catch the train to Shinbashi, and from Shinbashi to the station at Yokosuka. I could have gone directly from Tokyo Station, but preferred a more circuitous route for my usual reasons.

It was a brisk, clear morning: rare weather for Tokyo, and the kind I’ve always liked best. As I cut across Hibiya Park I saw a small asagao, a morning glory, blooming improbably in the cold spray of one of the fountains. It was a summer flower, and looked sad to me, as though it knew it would die soon in the autumn chill.

At Tokyo Station I bought a ticket to Shinbashi, where I transferred to the Yokosuka line, checking my back on the way. I bought a two-way ticket to Yokosuka, although a one-way would have been marginally more secure. All soldiers are superstitious, as Crazy Jake had liked to say, and old habits die hard.

I got on the train at 7:00, and it eased out of the station four minutes later, precisely on time. Seventy-four minutes after that we pulled into Yokusuka Station, across the harbor from the naval base. I stepped out onto the platform, attaché case in hand, and busied myself making an ostensible phone call from a public booth while the other passengers who had gotten off the train departed.

From the station I walked along the esplanade that follows the waterline of Yokosuka Harbor. A cold wind sliced across the water into my face, smelling faintly of the sea. The sky was dark, in contrast to the clear weather in Tokyo. Too good to last, I thought.

The harbor surface was as gray and foreboding as the sky. I paused on a wooden walkway overlooking the harbor, watching the brooding U.S. warships at rest, the clumps of hills behind them startlingly green against the gray of everything else. The detritus of the military was rhythmically washing up against the sea-wall below me: empty bottles, cigarette packs, plastic bags like some bizarre and decaying species of sea creature that had been wounded in the deep and come to the surface to die.

The harbor reminded me of Yokohama, and the long-ago Sunday mornings when my mother would take me there. Yokohama was where she went to church, and she was going to raise me as a Catholic. Back then we left from Shibuya Station, and the trip took over an hour, not the twenty minutes in which the distance can be covered today.

I remember the long train rides, on which my mother would always take my hand, literally leading me away from my father’s displeasure at the imposition of this primitive Western ritual on his impressionable young son. The church was an insidiously sensory experience: the settled, wooden smells of old paper and seat cushions; the erect pews, rigid as body casts; the glittering light of stained-glass angels; the ominous echoes of the liturgy; the bland taste of the Eucharist. All catalyzed by a dawning sense that the experience took place through a window that my father, the other half of my cultural heritage, would have preferred to keep closed.

People like to say that the West is a guilt-based culture, while that of Japan is based on shame, with the chief distinction being that the former is an internalized emotion while the latter depends on the presence of a group.

But I can tell you as the Tiresias of these two worlds that the distinction is less important than people would have you believe. Guilt is what happens when there isn’t a group to shame you. Regret, horror, atrocity: if the group doesn’t care, we simply invent a God who does. A God who might be swayed by the subsequent good acts, or at least efforts, of an erstwhile wrongdoer.

I heard tires crunching gravel, and turned toward the parking lot behind me just in time to see the first of three black sedans brake to a stop a few meters from where I was standing. The rear doors flew open and a man got out on each side. All Caucasians. Holtzer, I thought.

The follow-on cars stopped to the left and right of the lead; with my back to the water, I was encircled. Two more men got out of each of the additional cars. All of them were brandishing compact Berettas.

“Get in,” the one closest to me growled, gesturing to the lead car with his gun.

“I don’t think so,” I said evenly. If they were going to kill me, I’d make them do it here.

Six of them stood around me in a semicircle. If they closed in a little tighter, I could try to blast through one of the guys at the outer edge — his opposite number would be afraid to shoot, lest he hit his comrade.

But they were well disciplined and resisted the urge to close. Probably they’d been briefed on the dangers of getting too near.

Instead, one of them reached under his jacket and pulled out what I instantly recognized as a taser — a stun gun.

Which meant they wanted to take me, not kill me. I pivoted to launch myself at the nearest man, but too late. I heard the pop of the taser firing its twin electrical darts, felt them sink into my thigh, current surging through my body. I went down, jerking helplessly, willing my hand to pull out the darts but getting no response from my twitching limbs.

They let the current surge for longer than they had to, standing around me while I spasmed like a fish on a deck. Finally it stopped, but I still had no control over my limbs and couldn’t draw a breath. I felt them doing a pat-down — ankles, thighs, lower back. Hands pushed up the back of the suit jacket and I felt the Glock being taken from its holster. I waited for the pat-down to continue but it didn’t. They must have been satisfied that they had found my weapon, and searched no further — an amateur mistake that saved the flashbang, which had stayed in place.

Someone knelt on my neck and handcuffed my arms behind my back. A hood was pulled over my head. Someone else moved in and I felt them pick me up, limp as a burlap sack, and dump me onto the floor in the back of one of the cars. Then knees were pressing down on my back, doors were slamming, and the car jerked into motion.

We drove for less than five minutes. From our speed and the absence of turns, I knew we were still on National Highway 16 and that we had passed the base. During the ride I tested my fingers, wiggled my toes. Control was coming back, but my nervous system was still scrambled from the electric jolt I had received, and I felt sick to my stomach.

I felt the car slow down and turn right, heard gravel crunching beneath the tires. We stopped. Doors opened, and a pair of hands took me by each ankle and dragged me out of the car. My head smacked the bottom edge of the door on the way out and I saw stars.

They pulled me to my feet and shoved me forward. I heard footsteps all around me and knew I was surrounded. Then they were pushing me up a short flight of stairs. I heard a door open, then slam shut with a hollow aluminum bang. I was shoved into a chair and the hood was pulled off my head.

I was inside a construction trailer. Dim light came through a single sliding window. A figure sat with his back to it.

“Hi, John. It’s good to see you.” It was Holtzer, of course.

“Fuck,” I said, deliberately radiating an air of defeat and despondency. Not so hard, under the circumstances. “How did you get to me?”

“I knew you’d hear about Bulfinch, that you’d make another play for the disk. I know you’ve got sources, that you might be able to put together enough of the pieces to track me. As a precaution, we set up checkpoints around the likely staging areas near the base. You walked right into one of them.”

“Fuck,” I said again, meaning it.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You got pretty close. But you should have known you were going to come up short, John. You always do, when you’re up against me.”

“Right,” I said, trying to see how I was going to get out of this. Without the handcuffs, I might be able to get past Holtzer and the two men at the door, although I didn’t know who was still outside. With the handcuffs, I wasn’t going anywhere.

“You don’t even know what I mean by that, do you?” he went on. “Christ, you’ve always been so blind.”

“What are you talking about?”

His fleshy lips twisted into a loathsome smile and he silently mouthed four words. I couldn’t catch them at first, so he kept mouthing them until I did.

I was the mole. I was the mole.

I dropped my head and fought for control. “Fuck you, Holtzer. You never had the access. It was someone on the ARVN side.”

“You think so?” he said, his face close to mine and his voice low and obscenely intimate so his men couldn’t hear. “Remember Cu Lai?”

The Cambodian village. I felt a sick feeling creeping in that had nothing to do with the aftereffects of the electric shock they had administered.

“What about it?” I said.

“Remember ‘Waste ’em’? Remember ‘Son, I assure you if I told you my rank you’d shit your pants for me’? You were tough, John! I had to use three sets of voices to convince you.”

Keep control, John. Focus on the problem. How do you get out of this.

“Why?” I asked.

“I had a source, a guy who could do a lot for me. I had to show him what I could do for him. Someone in the village had lent him a lot of money, was causing some problems about it. I wanted to show him how I could make those kinds of problems go away.”

“So you massacred an entire village to get to one guy?”

“Had to. You all look alike, you know.” He laughed at his joke.

“Bullshit. Why not just give the source money to pay back the loan?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “C’mon, Rain, the bean counters were paying much more attention to the money being expended than they were to the bullets. Some dead villagers? Just a few more V.C. to add to the body count. Christ, it was easier to do it that way than it would have been to requisition funds, fill out the paperwork, all that shit.”

For the first time since some of the nightmares of the war, I could feel real despair starting to drill its way into my mind. I began to understand bone deep that in a very few minutes I would be dead, that Holtzer would have won, as he’d been winning all along. And while the thought of my own death no longer particularly fascinated me, the knowledge that I had failed to stop him, at the same moment that I came to understand what he had caused me to do so long ago, was overwhelming.

“I don’t believe you,” I said, playing for time. “What were they giving you that would have been worth it? I know it wasn’t money — you’re still a government bean counter in a cheap suit, thirty-five years later.”

He made a face of exaggerated sympathy. “You’re such a farmer, Rain. There’s the way of the world, and you just don’t get it. You trade intel for intel, that’s the game. I had a source who was passing me information on NVA movements — information that was critical for the Arc Light raids that we used to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply chain. And even though SOG’s missions weren’t doing any real operational damage, the North had a bug up its ass about you cowboys because you made them look like they couldn’t control their own backyard. So they wanted intel on SOG, and were willing to pay a lot for it with intel of their own. I was bartering pigshit for gold.”

I knew he was telling the truth. There was nothing I could say.

“Oh, and let me share just one more tidbit before these men take you outside, shoot you in the back of the head, and dump your body in the harbor,” he went on. “I know all about ‘Crazy Jake.’ I volunteered you for the mission to get rid of him.”

My throat constricted. I couldn’t speak. It was like being raped.

“It’s true, it was just good luck that the problem of his little Montagnard army came to my attention. But I knew just the guy to handle it — his old high-school pal, John Rain. No one else could get close enough.”

It was over. I was going to die. My mind started to drift, and a strange calmness descended.

“I got the word out afterward. It was supposed to be confidential, but I made sure people knew. ‘Just between you and me,’ don’t you love that phrase? You might as well say, ‘make sure it gets in the papers.’ It’s great.”

I found myself remembering the time I had first climbed Mount Fuji. I was with my father, and neither of us had dressed properly for the cold. We took turns wanting to go back, but somehow the other always insisted on going on, and eventually we made it to the top. We always laughed about it afterward, and he had loved to tell the story.

“I’ll tell you, it made people uncomfortable, John. What kind of man can off his own best friend? Just sneak up on him and cap him? Not someone you could ever trust afterwards, I’ll tell you that. Not someone you could promote, whose career you could advance. I guess that bit of ‘just between you and me’ info pretty much ruined your career in the military, didn’t it? You’ve been nothing but a murderous little half-breed errand boy for your betters ever since.”

The old man had always liked to tell that story. And how glad he was that we had managed to take turns convincing each other to go on until we had made it.

“Cat got your tongue, Rain?”

Yeah, it was a good memory. Not a bad one to have with you on your way out.

He stood up and turned to the two men at the door. “Don’t kill him here — it’s too close to the naval base. The military still has his dental records, and might ID the body. We don’t want anyone to make any connection between him and the U.S. government — or with me. Take him somewhere else and dump him when you’re done.”

One of the men opened the door for him, and he walked out.

I heard car doors opening and closing, then two sets of tires crunching the gravel as they drove off. We had arrived in three cars, so only one was left. I didn’t know if there were other men outside.

The two men remained at the door, their faces impassive.

Some deep part of me welled up, insisting on going out fighting.

“These cuffs are starting to hurt,” I said, standing up slowly. “Can you do anything?”

One of them laughed. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of the pain in a few minutes.”

“But my arms hurt,” I said again, making a face of near-tears and lifting my elbows to create space between my upper arms and my torso. I saw one of them sneer with disgust.

“Oh God, I think I’m losing circulation,” I moaned. I worked my shoulders in circles until the flashbang was poised over my sleeve, then raised my elbows and started jiggling my arms violently. I felt the device ease into the upper part of the jacket sleeve.

The flashbang wouldn’t slide as easily because of the pressure of my handcuffed arms against my sides. I realized I should have tried to force it out onto my back, where it would have dropped down more easily into my handcuffed hands. Too late.

I lowered my wrists, straightening my arms, and started bouncing on my toes as though I had to urinate. “I need to take a leak,” I said.

The men at the door looked at each other, their expressions indicating that they found me pathetic.

Each bounce brought the device down another crucial centimeter. When it got past my elbow, I felt it slide smoothly down my sleeve and into my waiting hand.

The device had a five-second timer. If I rolled it out too early, they might make it out the door before it went off. If I waited too long, I would probably lose a hand. Not exactly how I was hoping to get the cuffs off.

I pulled the spoon free and counted. One-one thousand . . .

The man at the left of the door reached inside his jacket, started to slide out his gun.

Two-one thousand.

“Wait a second, wait a second,” I said, my throat tight. Three-one thousand.

They looked at each other, expressions disgusted. They were thinking, This is the hard case we’d been warned would be so dangerous?

Four-one thousand. I squeezed my eyes shut and spun so that my back was to them, simultaneously shoveling the flashbang at them with a flick of my wrists. I heard it hit the floor, followed by a huge bang that concussed my entire body. My breath was knocked out of me and I collapsed onto the floor.

I rolled left, then right, trying to take a breath, feeling like I was moving underwater. I couldn’t hear anything but a huge roaring inside my head.

Holtzer’s men were rolling on the floor, too, blinded, their hands gripping the sides of their heads. I drew a hitching, agonized breath and forced myself to my knees, then pitched onto my side, my balance ruined.

One of them pulled himself onto all fours and started feeling his way along the floor, trying to recover his gun.

I rolled onto my knees again, concentrating on balancing. One of the men was groping in a pattern of concentric circles that I saw would lead him momentarily to his weapon.

I planted a wobbly left foot forward and tried to stand, but fell over again. I needed my arms for balance.

The man’s groping fingers moved closer to the gun.

I rolled onto my back and plunged my hands downward as hard as I could, forcing my cuffed wrists below the curve of my hips and buttocks and onto the backs of my thighs. I wriggled frantically from left to right, sliding my wrists down the backs of my legs, slipping one foot, then the other, through the opening, and got my hands in front of me.

I rolled onto all fours. Saw the man’s fingers clutching the barrel of the gun.

Somehow I managed to stand. I closed the distance just as he was picking up the gun and kicked him soccer style in the face. The force of the kick sent him spinning away and knocked me over backward.

I lurched to my feet again just as the second man regained his own footing. He was still blinking rapidly from the flash, but he could see me coming. He reached inside his jacket, going for a weapon.

I stumbled over to his position just as he pulled free a pistol. Before he could raise it, I thrust the fingers of my cuffed hands hard into his throat, disrupting his phrenic and laryngeal nerves. Then I slipped my hands behind his neck and used the short space of chain between them to jerk his face down into my rising knee, again and again. He went limp and I tossed him to the side.

I turned toward the door and saw that the other one had gotten to his feet. One hand was extended and I flash-checked it, saw the knife. Before I could react by picking something up and getting it between us, he charged.

If he had stopped and collected himself he would have had a better chance, but he had decided to trade balance for speed. He thrust with the knife, but without focus. I had already taken a half step to the right, earlier than would have been ideal, but he couldn’t adjust. The blade just missed me. I spun counterclockwise, clamping onto his knife wrist with both hands. I tried to rotate him to the ground, aikido style, but he recovered his balance too quickly. We grappled like that for a second, and I had the sick knowledge that I was about to lose the knife hand.

I yanked his wrist in the other direction and popped my right elbow into his nose. Then I spun in fast, crudely with no setup, taking a headlock with my right arm and grabbing the lapel of my jacket under his chin as though it was a judogi. The knife hand came loose and I hip-threw him with the headlock, my left hand coming in to strengthen the grip on his neck as his body sailed over me. When his torso had reached the extreme circumference of the throw, I jerked his neck hard in the other direction. A crack reverberated up my arms as his neck snapped where my forearm was pressed against it. The knife clattered to the ground and I released my grip.

I sank to my knees, light-headed, and tried to think. Which one of them had the handcuff keys? I thought. I frisked the first guy, whose blue skin and swollen, protruding tongue told me the cartilage fracture had proven fatal, and found a set of car keys but not the handcuff keys. With the other guy I hit pay dirt. I pulled out what I was looking for, and a second later I was free. A quick search on the floor, and I was armed with one of their Berettas.

I stumbled out the door and into the parking lot. As I had expected, there was one car left. I got in, slid the key into the ignition, fired up the engine, and raced out into the street.

I knew where I was — just off the national highway, five or six kilometers from the entrance to the naval base. Standard operating procedure would be to stop Holtzer’s sedan before it could enter the grounds. Holtzer had left less than five minutes earlier. Given the traffic and the number of lights between here and the base, there might still be time.

I knew the odds were massively against me, but I had one important advantage: I didn’t give a shit whether I lived or died. I just wanted to watch Holtzer go first.

I wheeled left onto National Highway 16, flashing the high beams and working the horn to warn cars out of my way. I hit three red lights but forced my way through all of them, cars screeching to a halt on either side of me. Across from the local NTT building I saw that a red light ahead had created an opening in the oncoming traffic lane and I shot into it. I accelerated madly into oncoming traffic, leaning on the horn, then swung back into the correct lane just as the light changed so I could charge ahead of the cars that had been in front of me. I managed to buckle the seat belt as I drove, and noted with grim satisfaction that the car was equipped with an air bag. I had originally planned on tossing the flashbang into Holtzer’s car as a means of gaining entry. As I had told Midori, I was going to have to improvise.

I was ten meters from the main gate when I saw the sedan turning right onto the access road to the base. A Marine guard in camouflage uniform was approaching, holding up his hands, and the driver-side window was coming down. There were a lot of guards, I saw, and they were doing the checks several meters ahead of the guard gate — the results of the anonymous bomb tip.

There were too many cars in front of me. I wasn’t going to make it.

The sedan’s driver-side window was down.

I leaned on the horn, but no one moved.

The guard looked up to see where the commotion was coming from.

I hit a button and my window began to lower automatically.

The guard was still looking around.

I pulled out onto the sidewalk, knocking down trash cans and mauling parked bicycles. A pedestrian dove out of the way. A few meters from the base access road I hauled the steering wheel to the right and accelerated diagonally across the meridian, driving over plantings and aiming for Holtzer’s vehicle. The guard turned, saw me bearing down at high speed, and leaped clear just in time to save himself. I rammed the sedan full force into the driver-side rear door, spinning the car away from the impact and forming a two-car wreck shaped like the letter V. I was braced for the impact, and the seat belt and air bag, which deployed and deflated in a nanosecond as advertised, got me through.

I released the seat belt and tried the door, but it was jammed shut. I swiveled onto my back and shot my feet through the open window, grabbing the handle at the top of the door and using it to propel myself through.

It was only two steps to the sedan. I grabbed the steering wheel through the open window and hauled myself inside, my knees slamming into the door frame on the way in. I launched myself across the driver’s lap, scrambled to get my feet under me, then dove into the back. Holtzer was in the left seat, leaning forward, obviously disoriented from the impact. A young guy I took to be one of Holtzer’s aides sat next to him, a metal Halliburton attaché case between them.

I grabbed Holtzer around the head with my left arm, pressing the barrel of the Beretta against his temple with my right. I saw one of the Marine guards outside the driver’s window, his gun drawn, looking for an opening. I pulled Holtzer’s head closer.

“Get back, or I’ll blow his fucking head off!” I bellowed at him.

His expression was uncertain, but he kept the gun up. “Everyone out of the car!” I shouted. “Now!”

I reached all the way around Holtzer’s neck with my hand and took hold of my own lapel. We were cheek to cheek, and the Marine with the gun would have to have a hell of a lot of confidence in his marksmanship to try to get a shot off now.

“Out of the car!” I shouted again. “Now! You!” I yelled at the driver. “Roll up that fucking window! Roll it up!”

The driver pressed a switch and his window went up. I yelled at him again to get out and then to close the door. He stumbled out, slamming the door as he exited. “You!” I yelled at the aide. “Get out! Close the door behind you!”

Holtzer started to protest, but I squeezed his neck tighter, choking off the words. The aide glanced once at Holtzer, then tried the door.

“It’s jammed,” he said, obviously stunned and unable to take it all in.

“Climb across to the front!” I shouted. “Now!”

He scrambled forward and got out, taking the attaché case with him.

“All right, asshole, us too,” I said to Holtzer, letting go of his neck. “But first give me that disk.”

“Okay, okay. Take it easy,” he said. “It’s in my left breast pocket.”

“Take it out. Slowly.”

He reached over with his right hand and carefully took out the disk.

“Set it on my knee,” I said, and he did so. “Now lace your fingers together, turn toward the window, and put your hands behind your head.” I didn’t want him to try to make a play for the gun while I was picking up the disk.

I picked it up and slipped it into one of my jacket pockets. “Now we’re going to get out. But slowly. Or your head is going to be all over the upholstery.”

He turned to me, his eyes hard. “Rain, you don’t understand what you’re doing. Put the gun down before the guards outside blow you away.”

“If you’re not on your way out of this vehicle in the next three seconds,” I snarled, leveling the Beretta, “I will shoot you in the balls. Whether I leave it at that, I can’t say.”

Something was nagging at me, something about the way he had turned over the disk. Too readily.

Then I realized: It was a decoy. A disposable. He would never have given me the real disk so easily.

The attaché, I thought.

“Now!” I yelled, and he reached for the door handle. I pressed the gun barrel against his face.

We eased out of the car and were immediately surrounded by a phalanx of six Marine guards, all with drawn guns and deadly serious faces.

“Stay back or I’ll blow his head off!” I yelled, shoving the gun up under his jaw. I saw the aide standing behind the guards, the attaché case set at his feet. “You, over there! Open up that case!” He looked at me uncomprehendingly. “Yes, you! Open up that attaché case right now!”

He looked bewildered. “I can’t. It’s locked.”

“Give him the key,” I growled to Holtzer.

He laughed. “Like hell.”

Six people had the drop on me. I yanked Holtzer to the left so they would have to re-aim, giving myself a split second to pull the gun away from his head and crack him in the temple with the butt. He sank to his knees, stunned, and I went down with him, staying close to his body for what cover it could provide. I patted his left pants pocket, heard a jingling. Reached inside and pulled out a set of keys.

“Bring the case over here!” I yelled at the aide. “Bring it or he’s dead!”

The aide hesitated for a second, then picked up the case and carried it over. He set it down in front of us.

I tossed him the keys. “Now open it.”

“Don’t listen to him!” Holtzer yelled, struggling to his feet. “Don’t open it!”

“Open it!” I shouted again. “Or I’ll blow him away!”

“I order you not to open that case!” Holtzer screamed. “It’s the U.S. diplomatic pouch!” The aide was frozen, his face uncertain. “Goddamnit, listen to me! He’s bluffing!”

“Shut up!” I yelled, digging the barrel of the gun in under his chin. “Listen. You think he’s willing to take a chance on dying over the diplomatic pouch? What could be in there that’s so important? Open it!”

“Shoot him!” Holtzer screamed suddenly at the guards. “Shoot him!”

“Open that case or you’ll be wearing his fucking brains!”

The aide’s eyes went from the case to Holtzer, then back. It seemed that everyone was frozen.

It happened suddenly. The aide dropped to his knees, fumbling with the key. Holtzer started to protest, and I cracked him in the head with the pistol again. He sagged against me.

The case popped open.

Inside, clearly visible between two protective layers of foam, was Kawamura’s disk.

A long second passed, then I heard a familiar voice from behind me.

“Arrest this man.”

I turned and saw Tatsu walking toward me, three Japanese cops behind him.

The cops converged on me, one of them unclipping a set of handcuffs from his equipment belt.

One of the Marine guards started to protest.

“We are outside the base,” Tatsu explained in fluent English. “You have no jurisdiction. This is a Japanese domestic matter.”

My arms were bent behind my back, and I felt the handcuffs clicking into place. Tatstu held my eyes long enough for me to see the sadness in his, then turned and walked away.

24

THEY PUT ME in a squad car and drove me to Keisatsucho headquarters. I was photographed, fingerprinted, and put in a concrete cell. No one mentioned what I was being charged with, or offered to allow me to contact a lawyer. What the hell, I don’t know too many lawyers anyway.

The cell wasn’t bad. There was no window, and I kept time by counting the meals they brought me. Three times a day a taciturn guard dropped off a tray with rice and vinegared fish, some vegetables, and picked up the tray from the previous meal. The food was okay. After every third meal I was allowed to shower.

I was waiting for my sixteenth meal, trying not to worry about Midori, when two guards came for me and told me to follow them. They took me to a small room with a table and two chairs. A naked bulb hung over the table from the ceiling. Looks like it’s time for your interrogation, I thought.

I stood with my back against the wall. After a few minutes the door opened and Tatsu walked in, alone. His face was serious, but after five days of solitary, it felt good to see someone I knew.

“Konnichi wa,” I said.

He nodded. “Hello, Rain-san,” he said in Japanese. “It’s good to see you. I’m tired. Let’s sit.”

We sat down with the table between us. He was silent for a long time, and I waited for him to speak. I didn’t find his reticence encouraging.

“I hope you will forgive your recent incarceration, which I know must have been unexpected.”

“I did think a pat on the back would have been more in order after I dove through that car window.”

I saw the trademark sad smile, and somehow it made me feel good. “Appearances had to be maintained until I could straighten things out,” he said.

“It took you awhile.”

“Yes. I worked as quickly as possible. You see, to arrange for your release I first had to have Kawamura’s disk decrypted. After that, various phone calls had to be made, meetings arranged, levers pulled to secure your release. There was a great deal of evidence of your existence that needed to be purged from Keisatsucho files. All this took time.”

“You managed to decrypt the disk?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And its contents met your expectations?”

“Exceeded them.”

He was holding something back. I could sense it in his demeanor. I waited for him to continue.

“William Holtzer has been declared persona non grata and has been returned to Washington,” he said. “Your ambassador has informed us that he will be resigning from the CIA.”

“Just resigning? He’s not being charged with anything? He’s been a mole for Yamaoto, feeding false intel to the U.S. government. Doesn’t the disk implicate him?”

He bowed his head and sighed. “The information on the disk is not the kind of evidence that will be used in court. And there is a desire on both sides to avoid a public scandal.”

“And Yamaoto?” I asked.

“The matter of Yamaoto Toshi is . . . complicated,” he said.

“ ‘Complicated’ doesn’t sound good.”

“Yamaoto is a powerful enemy. To be fought obliquely, with stealth, over time.”

“I don’t understand. What about the disk? I thought you said it was the key to his power?”

“It is.”

It hit me then. “You’re not going to publish it.”

“No.”

I was silent for a long moment as the implications set in. “Then Yamaoto still thinks it’s out there,” I said. “And you’ve signed Midori’s death warrant.”

“Yamaoto has been given to understand that the disk was destroyed by corrupt elements of the Keisatsucho. His interest in Kawamura Midori is thus substantially reduced. She will be safe for now in the United States, where Yamaoto’s power does not extend.”

“What? You can’t just exile her to America, Tatsu. She has a life here.”

“She has already left.”

I couldn’t take it all in.

“You may be tempted to contact her,” he continued. “I would advise against this. She believes you are dead.”

“Why would she believe that?”

“Because I told her.”

“Tatsu,” I said, my voice dangerously flat, “explain yourself.”

His voice stayed matter-of-fact. “Although I knew you were concerned for her, I didn’t know, when I told her of your death, what had happened between you,” he said. “From her reaction, I realized.”

He paused for a long moment, then looked at me squarely, his eyes resigned. “I deeply regret the pain you feel now. However, I am more convinced even than before that I did the right thing in telling her. Your situation was impossible. It is much better that she know nothing of your involvement in her father’s death. Think of what such knowledge would do to her after what had happened between you.”

I wasn’t even surprised that Tatsu had put together all the pieces. “She didn’t have to know,” I heard myself say.

“At some level, I believe she already did. Your presence would eventually have confirmed her suspicions. Instead, she is left with memories of the hero’s death you died in completing her father’s last wishes.”

I realized, but somehow could not grasp, that Midori had already been made part of my past. It was like a magic trick. Now you see it; now you don’t. Now it’s real; now it’s just a memory.

“If I may say so,” he said, “her affair with you was brief. There is no reason to expect that her grief over your loss will be prolonged.”

“Thanks, Tatsu,” I managed to say. “That’s a comfort.”

He bowed his head. It would be unseemly for him to give voice to his conflicted feelings, and anyway he would still do what he had to. Giri and ninjo. Duty, and human feeling. In Japan, the first is always primary.

“I still don’t understand,” I said after a minute. “I thought you wanted to publish what’s on the disk. It would vindicate all your theories about conspiracies and corruption.”

“Ending the conspiracies and corruption is more important than vindicating my theories about them.”

“Aren’t they one and the same? Bulfinch said that if the contents of the disk were public, the Japanese media would have no choice but to follow up, that Yamaoto’s power would be extinguished.”

He nodded slowly. “There is some truth to that. But publishing the disk is like launching a nuclear missile. You only get to do it once, and it results in complete destruction.”

“So? Launch the missile. Destroy the corruption. Let the society breathe again.”

He sighed, his sympathy for the shock I had just experienced perhaps ameliorating the impatience he usually felt in having to spell everything out for me. “In Japan, the corruption is the society. The rust has penetrated so deep that the superstructure is made of it. You cannot simply rip it all out without precipitating a collapse of the society that rests on it.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “If it’s that corrupt, let it go. Get in there and rip.”

“Rain-san,” he said, a tiny note of impatience in his voice, “have you considered what would rise from the ashes?”

“What do you mean?”

“Put yourself in Yamaoto’s place. Plan A is to use the threat of the disk to control the LDP from the shadows. Plan B is to detonate the disk — to publish it — to destroy the LDP and put Conviction in power.”

“Because the tape implicates only the LDP,” I said, beginning to understand.

“Of course. Conviction seems a model of probity by comparison. Yamaoto would have to step out of the shadows, but he would finally have a platform from which to move the nation to the right. In fact, I believe this is his ultimate hope.”

“Why do you say that?

“There are signs. Certain public figures have been praising some of the prewar Imperial rescripts on education, the notion of the Japanese as a ‘divine people,’ and other matters. Mainstream politicians are openly visiting shrines like Yasukuni and its interred World War II soldiers, despite the costs incurred abroad by such visits. I believe Yamaoto orchestrates these events from the shadows.”

“I didn’t know you were so liberal on these things, Tatsu.”

“I am pragmatic. It matters little to me which way the country moves, as long as the move is not accompanied by Yamaoto’s means of control.”

I considered. “After what’s happened to Bulfinch and Holtzer, Yamaoto is going to figure out that the disk wasn’t destroyed, that you have it. He was already coming after you. It’s only going to get worse.”

“I am not such an easy man to get to, as you know.”

“You’re taking a lot of chances.”

“I am playing for stakes.”

“I guess you know what you’re doing,” I said, not caring anymore.

He looked at me, his face impassive. “There is another reason I must be careful with the disk’s contents. It implicates you.”

I had to smile at that. “Really?” I asked, imitating his country-bumpkin routine.

“I had been looking for the assassin for a long time, Rain-san — there have been so many convenient deaths of ‘natural causes.’ I always knew he was out there, although everyone else believed I was chasing a phantom. And now that I have found him, I realize he is you.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“That is for you to decide.”

“Meaning?”

“As I have told you, I have deleted all evidence of your activities, even of your existence, from the Keisatsucho’s databases.”

“But there’s still the disk. Is this your way of telling me that you’re going to have leverage over me?”

He shook his head, and I saw the momentary disappointment at my characteristic American lack of subtlety. “I am uninterested in such leverage. It is not the way I would treat a friend. Moreover, knowing your character and your capabilities, I recognize that the exertion of such leverage would be futile, and possibly dangerous.”

Amazing. The guy had just put me in jail, failed to publish the disk as he had implied he would, sent Midori to America, and told her I was dead, and yet I felt ashamed that I had insulted him.

“You are therefore free to return to your life in the shadows,” he went on. “But I must ask you, Rain-san, is this really the life you want?”

I didn’t answer.

“May I say that I had never seen you more . . . complete than you were in Vietnam. And I believe I know why. Because at heart you are samurai. In Vietnam you thought you had found your master, your cause larger than yourself.”

What he said hit a nerve.

“You were not the same man when we met again in Japan after the war. Your master must have disappointed you terribly for you to have become ronin.” A ronin is literally a floater on the waves, a person with no direction. A masterless samurai.

He waited for me to answer, but I didn’t. Finally he said, “Is what I am saying inaccurate?”

“No,” I admitted, thinking of Crazy Jake.

“You are samurai, Rain-san. But samurai cannot be samurai without a master. The master is yin to the samurai’s yang. One cannot properly exist without the other.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Tatsu?”

“My battle with what plagues Japan is far from over. My acquisition of the disk provides me with an important weapon in that battle. But it is not enough. I need you with me.”

“You don’t understand, Tatsu. You don’t get burned by one master and just find another. The scars go too deep.”

“What is your alternative?”

“The alternative is to be my own master. As I have been.”

He waved his hand as if to dismiss such nonsense. “This is not possible for human beings. Any more than reproduction is possible through masturbation.”

His uncharacteristic crudeness surprised me, and I laughed. “I don’t know, Tatsu. I don’t know if I can trust you. You’re a manipulative bastard. Look what you’ve been up to while I’ve been in jail.”

“Whether I am manipulative and whether you can trust me are two different matters,” he said, easily able to compartmentalize such things because he was Japanese.

“I’ll think about it,” I told him.

“That is all I would ask.”

“Now let me out of here.”

He motioned to the door. “You have been free to go since I came in.”

I gave him a small smile. “I wish you’d said so sooner. We could have done this over coffee.”

25

I TOOK MY time getting back to Tatsu. There were a few things I needed to settle first.

Harry, for one. He had hacked the Keisatsucho files the same day I ambushed Holtzer at Yokosuka, so he knew I’d been arrested and “detained.” Several days later, he told me, all references to me had been deleted from their files.

“When I saw those files had been deleted,” he said, “I thought they had disappeared you. I figured you were dead.”

“That’s what people are supposed to believe,” I said.

“Why?”

“They want my help with certain matters.”

“That’s why they let you go?”

“Nothing for nothing, Harry. You know that.” I told him about Midori.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” he said.

He had most of the pieces, I knew. But what would be the use of either of us acknowledging any of that?

“What are you going to do now?” he asked me.

“I haven’t figured all that out yet.”

“If you ever need a good hacker, you know where to find me.”

“I don’t know, Harry. You had a lot of trouble with that music lattice reduction or whatever the hell it was. The Keisatsucho cracked it no problem.”

“Hey, those guys have access to supercomputers at Japanese universities!” he sputtered, before noticing my grin. Then: “Very funny.”

“I’ll be in touch,” I told him. “I’m just going to take a little vacation first.”

I FLEW OUT to Washington, D.C., where Tatsu said they had shipped Holtzer. Processing his “retirement” would take a few days, even weeks, and in the meantime he’d be in the Langley area.

I thought I’d be able to find him by calling all the hotels listed in the suburban Virginia Yellow Pages. I worked my way outward from Langley in concentric circles, but there was no guest named William Holtzer at any of them. Probably he had checked in somewhere under an assumed name, using cash and no credit cards, afraid I might be coming after him.

What about a car, though? I started phoning the 800 numbers of the major rent-a-car companies. It was William Holtzer calling, wanting to extend his service contract. Avis didn’t have a record of a William Holtzer. Hertz did. The clerk was kind enough to tell me the license plate number of the car, which I told him I needed for some supplementary insurance I wanted to get through my credit card company. I was ready for him to ask why I didn’t just get the information from the key chain or the car itself, but he never did. After that, all I had to do was search a DMV database to learn that Holtzer was driving a white Ford Taurus.

Back to concentric circles. That night I drove through the parking lots of the major hotels closest to Langley, slowing to examine the license plate of every white Ford Taurus I passed.

At about two o’clock that morning I found Holtzer’s car in the parking garage of the Ritz Carlton, Tyson’s Corner. After confirming the license plate, I drove over to the nearby Marriott, where I took the license plates from a parked car. At the edge of the deserted parking lot of the Tyson’s Corner Galleria, I switched the plates over to the rental van I was driving. The new plates and the light disguise I was wearing would be enough to beat any unforeseen witnesses or security cameras.

I drove back to the Ritz. The spaces adjacent to the Taurus were taken, but there was an empty spot behind it to one side. It was better not to park alongside him anyway. If you’re savvy about the ways of my world, or even just sensitive to where and how you’re likely to be mugged, you’ll get nervous if you see a van parked right next to your car — especially a model with darkened rear windows, like mine. I pulled in, nose forward so the van’s sliding door would be facing Holtzer.

I checked my equipment. A 250,000-volt “Thunder Blaster” guaranteed to cause disorientation upon contact and unconsciousness in less than five seconds. A medium-sized pink rubber “Super Ball,” available for eighty-nine cents at pretty much any drugstore. A portable defibrillation kit like the ones some airlines are beginning to keep on their commercial jets, small enough to tote around in an ordinary briefcase and considerably more expensive than the Super Ball.

Shocking someone out of a ventricular fibrillation is tricky business. Three hundred and sixty joules is a massive dose of electricity. If a shock like that is applied at the top of the heart’s T wave — that is, between beats — you’ll induce a lethal arrhythmia. Modern defibrillators, therefore, have sensors that automatically detect the QRS complex of the heartbeat, which is the only instant at which the shock can safely be applied.

Of course, the same software that is designed to avoid the T wave can be reconfigured to initiate it.

I reclined the electronic seat a few degrees and relaxed. It was a safe bet that Holtzer would be heading over to the CIA’s campus sometime in the morning, so I expected to have to wait only a few more hours.

At six-thirty, about a half hour before it would get light outside, I walked over to the far end of the garage and urinated into some potted hedges. I limbered up for a few minutes, then headed back to the van, where I enjoyed a breakfast of cold coffee and Chicken McNuggets, left over from the previous evening. The culinary joys of surveillance.

Holtzer showed an hour later. I watched him emerge from the elevator and head toward me. He was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, dark tie. Standard Beltway attire, practically Agency issue.

His mind was elsewhere. I could see it in his expression, his posture, the way he failed to check the likely hot spots in the garage, especially around his car. Shame on him, being so careless in a potential crime zone like a parking garage.

I slipped on a pair of black cowhide gloves. A click of the switch on the Thunder Blaster produced a sharp arc of blue sparks and an electric crackle. I was ready to go.

I scanned the garage, satisfying myself that for the moment it was empty. Then I slipped to the back of the van and watched him move to the driver’s side of the Taurus, where he paused to remove his suit jacket. Good, I thought. Let’s not get any wrinkles on your funeral suit.

I waited until the jacket was just past his shoulders, the spot that would make effective reaction most awkward for him, then swung the van’s side door open and moved in on him. He looked up when he heard the door open, but had no chance to do anything but drop his mouth open in surprise. Then I was on him, my right hand jamming the Thunder Blaster into his belly, my left propping him up by the throat while the shock scrambled his central nervous system.

It took less than six seconds to drag his dazed form into the van and slide the door shut behind us. I pushed him onto the ample backseat, then gave him another hit with the Thunder Blaster to make sure he was incapacitated long enough for me to finish.

The moves were routine and it didn’t take long. I buckled him in with the lap and shoulder belt, pulling the latter all the way out and then letting it retract fully until it was locked in place. The hardest part was getting his shirt open and his tie out of the way so I could apply the paddles directly to his torso, where the conducting jelly would prevent any telltale burn marks. The seat belt and shoulder restraint kept him in place while I worked.

As I applied the second paddle, his eyes fluttered open. He glanced down at his exposed chest, then looked up at me.

“Way . . . way . . . ,” he stammered.

“Wait?” I asked.

He grunted, I guessed to affirm.

“Sorry, can’t do that,” I said, affixing the second paddle with medical tape.

He opened his mouth to say something else and I shoved the Super Ball into it. I didn’t want him to bite his tongue from the force of the shock — it could look suspicious.

I shifted to the side of the van to make sure I wasn’t touching him when the shock was delivered. He watched me as I moved, his eyes wide.

I flicked the switch on the unit.

His body jerked forward to the limit of the automatically locking shoulder belt and his head arched backward into the anti-whiplash head restraint. Cars are amazingly safe these days.

I waited for a minute, then checked his pulse to be sure he was finished. Satisfied, I removed the ball and the paddles, wiped off the residue of the conducting jelly with an alcohol swab, and fixed his clothes. I looked into his dead eyes and was surprised at how little I felt. Relieved, maybe. Not much more.

I opened the door of the Taurus with his key, then placed it in the car’s ignition. I scanned the garage again. A woman in a business suit, probably on her way to an early meeting, came out of the elevator. I waited for her to get in her car and drive off.

Using a modified fireman’s carry, I scooped up the body, walked it over to the car, and dumped it into the driver’s seat. I closed the door, then paused for a moment to examine my work.

That’s for Jimmy, I thought. And Cu Lai. They’ve all been waiting for you in hell.

And waiting for me. I wondered if Holtzer would be enough to satisfy them. I got into the van and drove away.

26

I HAD ONE more stop to make. Manhattan, 178 Seventh Avenue South. The Village Vanguard.

I had checked the Vanguard’s Web site, and knew that the Midori Kawamura trio was appearing at the club from the first Tuesday in November through the following Sunday. I called and made a reservation for the 1:00 A.M. set on Friday night. I didn’t need to use a credit card, although I knew they’d give away my seat if I didn’t show up at least fifteen minutes before the set, so I was easily able to use an alias: Watanabe, a common Japanese name.

I headed up Interstate 95, crossing from Maryland to Delaware and then to New Jersey. From the turnpike I could have picked up I-80 and gone on to Dryden, two hundred miles and someone else’s lifetime away.

Instead I left the turnpike for the Holland Tunnel, where I entered the city and drove the quarter mile to the Soho Grand Hotel on West Broadway. Mr. Watanabe had reserved a suite for Friday night. He arrived before six o’clock to ensure that the hotel didn’t give away his reservation, and paid cash for the suite, counting out fourteen hundred dollar bills for the night. The staff, to their credit, evinced no surprise, probably guessing that the wealthy man with a passion for anonymity would be meeting his mistress.

The early arrival gave me time to shower, sleep for three hours, and enjoy an excellent room service dinner of Paillard of Veal and an ’82 Mouton from the hotel’s Canal House Restaurant. With another hour to kill before I left for the Vanguard, I repaired to the visually spectacular Grand Bar, where the ambience of the high ceilings, warm lighting, and wonderfully symmetrical black glass tables made up for an unimaginative selection of single malts and the annoying house music. Still, there’s no quarreling with a twenty-five-year-old Macallan.

I walked the mile or so from the hotel to the Vanguard. It was cold, and I was glad for the charcoal gabardine trousers, black cashmere mock turtleneck, and navy blazer I was wearing. The charcoal trilby I was wearing low across my forehead also provided some warmth, while obscuring my features.

I picked up my ticket at 12:35, then continued walking until almost 1:00 sharp. I didn’t want to take a chance on Midori or anyone else in her trio walking past me at the back of the wedge-shaped room before the set began.

I passed under the trademark red awning and neon sign and through the mahogany doors, taking a seat at one of the small round white tables in back. Midori was already at the piano, wearing black like the first time I saw her. It felt good to watch her for the moment, unobserved, separated by a sadness that I knew she must have shared. She looked beautiful, and it hurt.

The lights dimmed, the murmur of conversation died away, and Midori brought the piano to life with a vengeance, her fingers ripping into the keys. I watched intently, trying to lock in the memory of the way she moved her hands and swayed her body, the expressions of her face. I knew I’d be listening to her music forever, but this would be the last time I would watch her play.

I had always heard a frustration in her music, and loved the way it would at times be replaced by a deep, accepting sadness. But there was no acceptance in her music tonight. It was raw and angry, sometimes mournful, but never resigned. I watched and listened, feeling the notes and the minutes slipping away from me, trying to find some solace in the thought that perhaps what had passed between us was now part of her music.

I thought about Tatsu. I knew he had done right in telling Midori I was dead. As he said, she would have figured out the truth eventually, or it would have found its own way of forcing itself into her consciousness.

He was right, too, about my loss not being a long-term issue for her. She was young and had a brilliant career opening up right in front of her. When you’ve known someone only briefly, even if intensely, death comes as a shock, but not a particularly long or deep one. After all, there was no time for the person in question to become woven tightly into the fabric of your life. It’s surprising, even a little disillusioning, how quickly you get over it, how quickly the memory of what you might have shared with someone comes to seem distant, improbable, like something that might have happened to someone you know but not to you yourself.

The set lasted an hour. When it was done, I stood up and eased out the back, exiting through the wooden doors and pausing for a moment under a moonless sky. I closed my eyes and inhaled the smells of Manhattan’s night air, at once strange and yet, connected to that long-ago life, still disturbingly familiar.

“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice came from behind me.

I turned, thinking Midori. But it was only the coat-check girl. “You left this behind,” she said, holding out the trilby. I had placed it on the seat next to me after the lights had gone down and had then forgotten it.

I took the hat wordlessly and walked off into the night.

Midori. There were moments with her when I would forget everything I had done, everything I had become. But those moments would never have lasted. I am the product of the things I have done, and I know I will always wake up to this conclusion, no matter how beguiling the reverie that precedes the awakening.

What I needed to do was not deny what I was, but to find a way to channel it. Maybe, for the first time, into something worthwhile. Maybe something with Tatsu. I’d have to think about that.

Midori. I still listen to her music. I hang on hard to the notes, trying to keep them from vanishing into the air, but they are elusive and ungraspable and each one dies in the dark around me like a tracer in a treeline.

Sometimes I catch myself saying her name. I like its texture on my lips, something tenuous but still tangible to give substance to my memories. I say it slowly, several times in succession, like a chant or a prayer.

Does she ever think of you? I sometimes wonder.

Probably not, is the inevitable reply.

It doesn’t matter. It feels good to know she’s out there. I’ll keep listening to her from the shadows. Like it was before. Like it’s always going to be.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

TO MY AGENT, Nat Sobel, and his wife, Judith, for believing in me all the way back to the first iteration. At times Nat knew John Rain better than I did (this could be a little unsettling), and Rain would never have emerged as the complex character he is without Nat’s insight and guidance.

To Walter LaFeber of Cornell University, for being a great teacher and friend, and for writing The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Diplomatic Relations, the definitive study of its subject, which provided some of the historical foundations for the birth of John Rain.

To my instructors, formal and informal, and randori partners at the Kodokan in Tokyo, the beating heart of world judo, for imparting to me some of the skills that make their home in John Rain’s deadly toolbox.

To Benjamin Fulford, Forbes Tokyo Bureau Chief, for his courageous and unrelenting reporting of the corruption that plagues Japan — corruption that acts as an underpinning for this story and that should be more widely heeded by the people it most directly affects.

To Koichiro Fukasawa, a diplomat with the soul of an artist and the most bicultural person I have ever known, for sharing his insights about all things Japanese, and for introducing me to so many of the marvels of Tokyo.

To Dave Lowry, for his sublime Autumn Lightning: The Education of an American Samurai, which influenced my own understanding of shibumi and the warrior arts, and which provided, therefore, part of the education of John Rain.

To the omnidirectional Carl, veteran of the secret wars, for teaching me to hit first, soon, early, and often, whose very presence got me thinking in the right direction.

Most of all to my wife, Laura, for putting up with my writing and other obsessions and for doing so many other things to support and encourage the creation of this book. Through countless discussions on walks, long drives, and sometimes late at night over a single malt, Laura helped me as no one else ever could to find the story, the characters, the words, the will.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

WITH TWO EXCEPTIONS, I have depicted the Tokyo in this book as accurately as I could. Tokyoites familiar with Shibuya will know that there is no Higashimura fruit store midway up Dogenzaka. The real fruit store is at the bottom of the street, closer to the station. And seekers after Bar Satoh in Omotesando, although they will come across a number of fine whiskey bars in the area, will find Satoh-san’s establishment only in Miyakojima-ku, Osaka. It is the best whiskey bar in Japan and worth the trip.