I squatted on the landing, fighting the screaming need to breathe, holding the door open a crack and watching as three of Yamaoto’s men walked into the corridor. One of them was doubled over — the guy I had nailed with the can of coffee. They walked into Conviction’s offices and out of my field of vision.
Immediately, I heard Harry: “They’re back in the office. The front of the building is clear. Walk out the side exit now and head east across the park toward Sakurada-dori.”
I went down the stairs quietly but fast. Stuck my head out the exit door at the bottom, looked both ways. All clear. I shuffled down an alley connecting Hibiya-dori and Chuo-dori and cut across the park. The sun felt good on my face.
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.