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.”