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.