Fumio told him.
* * * * *
At least once a week Adachi had reported to Prosecutor Sekine, and this time as he stood outside his mentor's door his heart was heavy.
Loyalties that he had taken for granted all his life were now in question. Like most Japanese, he had never held politicians or the political system in high esteem, but he had always had a great deal of faith in the basic administration of the country. Now he was beginning to think he had been naïve.
Political corruption must spill over into the civil administration. Vast sums of money were not paid over to politicians merely to perpetuate an ineffective political system. No, the money was handed over to get a very real return, and the only way that could be done was by involving senior civil servants. To accomplish anything at all, politicians had to work through them. The strings of the kuromakus led directly to these people.
The logic was unpalatable but inescapable. The cadre of elite civil servants who mainly came from his, Adachi's, social circle, must be tainted. To what extent, he did not know, but that the rot was there he was sure. And he was equally positive that he was already a victim.
He knocked a second time on the door. There was no reply so he turned the handle and entered. It was the accepted custom that he would wait for the prosecutor in his office.
Toshio Sekine, the much-respected and loved friend of the Adachi family, a civil servant widely renowned for his integrity, lay slumped back in his chair, his head back and tilted to the right, revealing the gaping second mouth of a slashed throat and severed jugular. Fresh blood matted his clothing from the neck down and stained the desk in front of him. Beside his right hand was the file Adachi had sent him and a blood-splashed, sealed envelope. Adachi looked at it. It was addressed to him. He slipped it into his inside pocket unread and moved to examine the body.
The carpet beneath the prosecutor's chair was also sodden with blood. The traditional folding razor he had used to cut his throat lay just below his right hand.
Adachi bent his head as a wave of grief swept over him, and stood there for several minutes in silent sorrow and tribute. Then he summoned help and did what he was trained to do. Whatever Sekine had done or thought he had done, there lay a fundamentally honorable man.
* * * * *
Fitzduane found half his convoy — two Tokyo MPD detectives, including the ever-reliable Sergeant Oga — waiting patiently in the corridor outside the miniature offices of the Japan-World Research Federation.
The other two were in the car below. It did not do much for spontaneity to be trailed around by four men all the time, but there were times when it had its advantages.
"Sergeant-san," he said urgently, "It is very important that I talk to Superintendent Adachi — now!"
Oga, a man of few words, blended a brief ‘Hai, Colonel-san,’ he said. Everyone is logged in or out of headquarters, and he is logged out. We checked the building anyway, but with no success. He was last reported at the prosecutor's office — there has been a death there — but apparently he left alone. The dead man was someone he was close to, and he was very upset."
Bloody hell! thought Fitzduane. The man could be anywhere — drowning his sorrows in any one of Tokyo's tens of thousands of bars or just walking to clear his head. But we are all creatures of habit. What I need is someone who knows his habits. No, fuck it! There isn't time.
"Domestic accident." Schwanberg's phrase came into his mind. Almost certainly, it had not been meant literally, but it was a logical angle. You don't kill a policeman at his place of work. You hit him when he is off duty and he is relaxing and his guard is down. A bar or a girlfriend's bedroom or the street would do fine, but who knows when a cop working the lunatic hours of Tokyo MPD would turn up in such a place, and a good, well-executed hit demands predictability. But almost everybody returns home sooner or later, and Adachi, he had gathered, lived alone.
"Sergeant-san," said Fitzduane. "Do you know where the superintendent lives?"
"Hai, Colonel-san," said Oga in affirmation. "It is quite near your hotel and no more than twenty minutes or so from here. A lot depends on the traffic."
"The I suggest we get the hell over there very bloody fast," said Fitzduane, and started to run down the corridor. Sergeant Oga spoke into his radio to alert the driver below to bring the car around to the entrance, and only then headed after Fitzduane. The gaijin was still waiting for an elevator. Oga restrained a smile.
"Sergeant Oga," said Fitzduane, with a snarl, "you're a good man, but I think you should know I can read your mind. Now listen. When this turgid technology arrives and we get down to the street, I want the drive to break every rule in the book and get us to the superintendent's as fast as he can. Someone is trying to kill Adachi-san, and I think it would be a real good idea if we stopped it. What's your opinion?"
Oga's internal smile vanished. He swallowed and nodded. The elevator arrived.
* * * * *
Adachi stared unseeing into the still water of the Imperial moat.
He had switched both his radio and beeper off. He needed time to grieve alone and to think his situation through. A gray mood of depression gripped him. Everywhere he turned he seemed to be faced with corruption and betrayal. Even the best of men like the prosecutor was contaminated.
The bloody envelope had laid out the story. An indiscretion years earlier had made Sekine vulnerable. More recently, the marker had been called in and the prosecutor had been enrolled as part of the move by Katsuda against Hodama and the Namakas. He did not even have to do anything except keep Katsuda informed and push the prosecution forward in his normal, thorough way.
But then Adachi had upset the plan. Instead of taking the easy way out and working the case based upon the evidence against the Namakas so carefully prepared by Katsuda, he had played the masterful detective. His foolish cleverness had destroyed the case against the Namakas, who well deserved prosecution, and had placed the prosecutor in the position of having to make a choice between his obligations toward Katsuda and his affection for Adachi. And the resolution had been his life. Mistakes or not, he was an honorable man and his death was an honorable death. But what a waste, what a terrible waste.
There was not a scrap of evidence against Katsuda. Even Sekine's suicide not had avoided the man's actual name. The context was clear enough to Adachi, but the letter would be useless for legal purposes. No, Katsuda would end up as the new kuromaku and there was not a thing that Adachi could do about it.
The system was corrupt at the top and, subject to some window dressing, that would remain the situation. If he had any sense, he would bend like the proverbial bamboo or else someone was likely to break him.
The final betrayal was the confirmation that the informant inside his team was his ever-reliable Inspector Fujiwara. The man had been operating under orders of the prosecutor, so he may have thought he was doing the right thing, but his behavior hurt horribly.
Fujiwara had been implicated by name in the prosecutor's letter. Adachi had already guessed as much since the Sunday of the baseball match, but had pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Of course, it was unlike Fujiwara to by working on a Sunday when the rest of the team were glued to the TV, but that just might not have been significant.