“We don’t want to just show a cool video. That’s unnecessary. The information we want to communicate to buying customers is the new car’s excellent cost performance. We don’t want to make a buzz of it, we want to convey an accurate feeling of driving it. So it’s meaningless if it’s not a street that the general public needs to drive on. If you show them images of it driving through Australia or California, that’s not helpful to the customers at all.”
It was annoying, but I agreed with his opinion. When I peeked a look at Sugimoto and Kozuka, they were exchanging troubled looks. Perhaps they were going to make the location Australia.
I glanced at the clock. Since calling Juri, twenty-seven minutes had passed.
Then the seconds hand made three laps around the face of the clock. I examined Katsutoshi Katsuragi’s expression. There was no apparent change in it. It looked as though he were focusing his concentration on this boring meeting.
Finally, that straight face clouded over in an instant. Katsuragi put his hand in the inner pocket of his suit. It was as I thought. The guy hadn’t turned off his cellphone.
“Excuse me for a second,” he said and exited the room.
The meeting was on hold. The EVP leaving his seat to take a call is so unusual, the guys from Nissei Auto were murmuring.
Soon, Katsuragi returned and whispered something into the ear of one of his subordinates. When the latter nodded, Katsuragi left the room again without saying a word to us.
“Um, Katsuragi has left on urgent business. However, he asked that we continue this meeting.”
“But without Mr. Katsuragi, is there any point in going on?”
“We’re familiar with his general position.”
“Is that right.” Kozuka put on a sour face, which was unusual. You couldn’t blame him when the person who’d called the meeting had up and left.
I brought my face towards Kozuka. “President, I’m going back to the office. It seems that me being here for any longer is meaningless.”
Kozuka nodded yes. He probably didn’t have the time to be concerned about me.
When I left the room, I was seized by a desire to go to the parking lot. There was no mistaking that around now, Katsutoshi Katsuragi was hurriedly turning on his Mercedes’ engine in the executive parking space. But then, having someone witness me watching him was too big of a risk. I decided to be patient and headed to the front entrance.
I hailed a taxi outside Nissei Automobile’s headquarters and decided to return to Aoyama for the time being. However, near the office, I got off and immediately hailed a different taxi. I told the driver to head toward Asakusa. I looked at the clock.
Juri would first have called home. There, Katsuragi’s wife had been on standby. What kinds of things had she said to Juri, who wasn’t really her daughter? There were detectives next to her, so Mrs. Katsuragi might have at least spoken with a tone of worry. In her heart, she was surely cursing a development that was costing them three hundred million yen.
Juri would have instructed her to immediately load the money and depart. No details as to the destination—we’d decided that the instructions would be to ‘head west on road X’ and so on.
Juri had also called Katsutoshi Katsuragi. I was there. Her instructions to him were succinct: fetch a cardboard box and tape and be ready to leave in his Mercedes on a moment’s notice.
I called Juri.
“Hello, it’s me.” Juri’s voice sounded bubbly to me.
“How was it?”
“I did everything just like you said. Mama will get to Shinjuku soon.”
“Good, next step then. I’m already heading there.”
“Got it.” She hung up.
Putting away my cellphone, I imagined Katsuragi’s wife’s BMW pulling up to City Hall. Juri would be calling Katsutoshi Katsuragi and giving him directions to head there too.
There would probably be a police tail on the BMW. And almost certainly, there was a transmitter or bug on the car or wife. What we had to do first was to remove those devices. In order to do that, we had to trade the driver and car.
On the next call Juri would instruct them to move the ransom from the suitcase to the cardboard box. Then, Katsutoshi Katsuragi would transport the cash in his Mercedes. With that, all the troublesome devices would be gone.
When I had told Juri this plan, she had frowned.
“Even if you change the car and driver, it’s over if they just transfer the transmitter or bug.”
I shook my head immediately. “They wouldn’t do that.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“Because they can’t be seen doing it. Your parents aren’t the police. There’s no way they could secretly transfer the equipment without catching anyone’s attention.”
“But we won’t be there.”
“And how would they know that?”
“Oh…right.”
“The culprits might be watching from somewhere—so long as we make them think so, the game continues to our advantage. You could say this is poker.”
As my body swayed in the cab, I prayed for Juri to execute her several procedures successfully. Our opponents believed she was being made to call. That she was acting independently was probably something they wouldn’t even dream of. That alone had the effect of a straight flush.
I got out of the taxi as we approached Komagata bridge. From here I would go on foot. I sorted through the plan in my head as I walked. It’s okay, it’ll go well.
A skyscraper stood facing the expressway. It was the building of a certain beer company. I took the elevator to the top floor. It had an observation deck that doubled as a beer hall. I bought a meal ticket for a draft beer at the entrance.
The place had a U-shaped counter with seats that faced the window. There were several guests. I settled down at the left corner. I took out my binoculars and focused them on the expressway. That wasn’t unusual for the guests here, so no one paid any attention. Or rather, they weren’t looking anywhere except out the window, and the staff could only see the guests’ backs.
If Juri had done her work without a hitch, then Katsutoshi Katsuragi’s Mercedes should already be heading this way. I was a little anxious. I needed Juri to be here soon, or I would be in trouble.
When I tried looking at my wristwatch, someone tapped my shoulder. Juri took a seat to my left. She was wearing an aqua dress.
“Mr. Katsuragi is…?” I asked in a whisper.
“Just now, he got on the expressway,” Juri replied curtly.
I held up the binoculars. Although the lens had pretty high magnification, picking out Katsuragi’s Mercedes from among the traffic was difficult.
“Call him. Confirm his location.”
Juri did as she was told. It seemed the call went through right away.
“Hello, it’s me. Where are you now?” she asked in a low voice. “What? You just got on the Mukojima segment?”
I adjusted the binoculars. With any luck, he’d be arriving from Hakozaki in just a few minutes.
“They’re saying to keep driving….I’m sorry, I don’t know where the destination is, either.”
Juri didn’t hang up. It was a burner, so she didn’t have to, but once this game ended, it needed to be disposed of immediately.
A silver-gray Mercedes entered my visual field. It was driving in the slow lane. I was sure it was the right car. I couldn’t actually see the driver’s face, but my intuition was telling me that it was Katsuragi.
After counting in my head, I opened my mouth. “Tell him to get off at Mukojima after he passes Komagata. You know the rest of the instructions.”
Confirming Juri’s silent nod out of the corners of my eyes, I took out my own phone. I made a call to a number that I’d recorded in the phone’s memory.