Remote Control

by Kotaro Isaka

  Masaharu Aoyagi

  He was gasping for breath and still trying to figure out how to run with his hands bound. T he people he passed stared at the handcuffs and shrank away from him. It was easy to see why. Everyone in Sendai must be on edge after the assassination, so the sight of a handcuffed man running by was bound to turn heads.

  He ducked into a narrow alley, hoj)ing to find a place to rest for a moment. He tripj)ed over a trashcan t)ut stumbled on. More screams in the distance: mayl)e Kot)atozawa was still playing cowboy.

  (.oming to the entrance ol a small, rundown building, he ran downstairs t(j a landing halfway to the basement, dropped his backi)ack, iind colkipsed against the wall. Alter a few deej) breaths, he studied the handculfs, yanking his arms apart as hard as he could though he knew it was lutile.

  "I can get those oh you," said a voice Irom the top ol the stairs. Aoyagi turned, and as he did so, he slipper! and tell to tlir* bottom ol the stairs. "Sorry,

  REMOTE CONTROL

  did I scare you?" When the man moved slowly toward him, Aoyagi realized who he was. T he slight build and startled look in the eyes—it was the young man who had tangled with Kobatozawa back at the car. Now that he could inspect him more closely, it was clear that he was older than a student, but his manner was hesitant. "Here, let me help you," he said, holding out his hand to pull him up. Aoyagi ignored the offer and scrambled to his feet, though it took quite an effort with his hands bourid. "Then let me try this," the man continued, still holding out his hand. Aoyagi thought he was about to be stabbed, but suddenly noticed there was a small key resting in his palm. He held out his hands, and almost miraculously the cuffs fell away from his wrists.

  "Where'd you get that?" he murmured, half stunned.

  "This?" said the man, almost sheepishly. "1 borrowed it from that guy back there. When he grabbed me, 1 had a chance to do a little research in his pockets." He seemed quite relaxed, with none of the reserve that would have been usual, given the difference in their ages. His hand moved slowly to the pouch on his belt; he took out a pair of glasses and put them on.

  Aoyagi looked down at his own hands, which could move freely again. "Why are you helping me?" he said.

  "Is that what Fm doing?" the man asked. "1 don't even know who you are." Aoyagi looked up, startled. "1 was following that thug in the car, and you just happened to be along for the ride."

  "But you crashed into us. What about your car?"

  "That old thing? 1 just borrowed it, too." As he listened to him, Aoyagi had the feeling he'd heard the lines before, as though he were watching a scene in some old movie—a story remote from everyday reality. Apparently, the young man had caught sight of the three of them leaving Kazu's apartment. "1 knew it was him right away," he said. "No mistaking a guy wearing earphones and carrying a gun. 1 followed you, but when you got in the car, 1 stopped that white car and drove after you. 1 can't remember how long it's been since 1 drove a car." Aoyagi wondered how he had managed to "borrow" the thing, but he resisted the temptation to ask. The woman in the passenger seat had been unconscious, her head smashed against the window. Was it her car? And had his knife made the dark stain on her shirt? "They say your enemy's enemy is your friend. 1 could tell they were taking you off somewhere, so 1 guess you could say 1 was helping you."

  THE INCIDENT

  "Did Kobatozawa follow you?" Aoyagi realized the knife was nowhere to be seen and wondered whether he had left it planted in one of the police officers.

  "Kobatozawa?"

  "The guy with the gun, did he follow you?"

  "That's his name? Sounds like a bad joke." When he smiled, he looked quite harmless. "But 1 guess the joke was on him. Big guy like that, toting a gun, thought Td be no match for him. But 1 won again today. Bet he's not talking so big now."

  "But why did you take the key?"

  "No particular reason. It just seemed like the neighborly thing to do—seeing as how we're kind of in the same boat."

  ".And what boat is that?"

  "1 think it's always best to complicate the storyline, so to speak. Stealing the key gives the impression that there's some sort of connection between us. The police will think so, and so will the media. And they'll all be wrong. It's the first rule of the fox—throw them off the scent, mix things up, distract them. The key didn't matter to me, but 1 thought I'd get you out of those handcuffs just for the heck of it. Pretty nice of me, if 1 say so myself. . . . But it's what I'm always asking myself: how come a nice guy like me doesn't have any friends?" Standing there facing him, Aoyagi suddenly felt like a kid cornered by a bully in an alley—though anyone seeing them would assume the roles were reversed, that he was threatening this little guy. "Strange name—Kobatozawa," he continued. "(>an't say it suits him—too many syllables. Surprised he can pronounce it himself."

  "Not any stranger than your name." Aoyagi blurted out what had been going through his head, though he instantly regretted it. lie might he writing his own e|)itaph, but somehow he couldn't stop himself. "T hey call you (mtter, don't they? You're the guy who's been attacking |)eo|)le all over the city."

  The man's eyes narrowed tor a moment, but then his lace seemed to relax. "Surprise!" he said.

  "T here was a picture with an article about you in a magazine a while back, after you'd already bumped off a lot ol people. It was like a manga, you with

  REMOTE CONTROL

  your knife in a showdown with a big man with a gun." One of the other drivers had shown it to him. "We thought it was dumb, way over the top, more like an American comic book." They had all laughed at the picture at the time, but he now realized that it had been based on real events—on an earlier encounter between Cutter and Kobatozawa.

  "I saw it," Cutter said in a flat voice. Then he gave him an impatient look, as if to say they couldn't stand there talking all day. "Coming?" And with a jerk of his finger he headed up the stairs and into the alley.

  Aoyagi shouldered his pack. He couldn't have said why, but he didn't feel afraid of him really—a man whose crimes had terrified the whole city—and barely hesitated before following him. At one point, as if reading his mind. Cutter turned around. "Don't I scare you?" he asked.

  "I guess you should," Aoyagi said, "but nothing makes any sense today, so this fits right in." It was a bit like putting fruit in a juicer: once it was all mixed up, it didn't matter whether you threw in any new stuff.

  "So what did you do?" Cutter asked.

  "I didn't do anything. They're trying to frame me for something, so I ran. Those two caught me, but thanks to you I seem to be running again—though I have to admit I'm pretty tired." Which is why I don't have the energy to get away from you, he decided not to add.

  Cutter suddenly stopped and turned to look at him, his eyes scanning down his body. Then he reached toward him. Aoyagi would have jumped away, but Cutter's hand darted behind his back. "Look," he said, holding out something he'd apparently removed from him. "They're tracking you. They don't miss a trick."

  "They must have put it on when we were in the car," Aoyagi said, taking the transpoiider and slipping it into a mailbox on the nearest building. "Let's go," he said.

  Cutter seemed to know his way through the maze of narrow streets. They moved quickly, ending up at a rundown love hotel. They ducked into an old apartment building next door. It was dark, lit only by the neon sign of the hotel, but they made their way to the stairs at the back. Cutter opened the door of the first apartment on the second floor and switched on the light. The single bulb was covered with an orange shade, dyeing the room a somber shade of saffron. The apartment was just one six-tatami-mat room.

  THE INCIDENT

  "What do they call you?" Cutter asked.

  "Aoyagi." There seemed little reason to hide his identity, "How about you?"

  "Miura."

  "is this where you live?"

  "This dump? Are you kidding?" he said, sitting down at a low table in the middle of the room. Aoyagi sat across from him. "They've got the whole city
wired with those pods. 1 needed someplace 1 could hide when things are hot."

  "Are we safe here?"

  "For the time being."

  "But it's not yours?"

  Miura's eyes moved to a photograph on top of a small bookcase against the wall: a man in a leather jacket standing next to a boy. "It's theirs," he said, nodding at the picture. "Tm just using it for a while."

  "And where are they?"

  He sat quietly for a moment, his mouth drawn into a tight line. "1 gave them some money," he said at last. "They had this dream of driving all over the country, so 1 gave them enough to go and do it. They let me use this place in return—not a bad deal for them, 1 think. They're out there somewhere right now in a red convertible." Aoyagi made himself look away from the picture, certain somehow that none of this was true. "1 bet you don't believe me," Miura said. "1 bet you think 1 killed them."

  "No, 1 don't," Aoyagi said, though he was far from sure he meant it.

  "They say the Security Pods were put in to catch me, but it's a lie. I'm just a pretext. They talk about protecting the citizens of Sendai, but what they really want to do is watch them, everywhere, all the time."

  "But you gave them the opj)ortunity," Aoyagi said.

  "T hey'd have hmnd S(jme other excuse if 1 hadn't come along. Politicians are brilliant at finding excuses—if not at much else. T hey create a panic— war, terrorism, whatever—in order to say that they need more power to tleal with it. Did they really need all those jiods tor one kid with a knile?"

  "Do they really work?"

  "Sort ot. As tar as I know, eacli one picks up tr.msmissions witliin a radius ot a tew dozen meters, but they've got huiictreits ot tlu*m around the city

  HS

  REMOTE CONTROL

  now, and more being installed all the time. They can get phones and data from Wifi, and they do voice recordings; and there's a fisheye camera in the dome that can film everything in a 350-degree radius around the pod. And apparently they can control it like a remote security camera to see what's going on in real time."

  "And where does all that information go?"

  "A computer system links the pods. So rather than sending the data to a central server, I think they access each one from the computer."

  "It sounds like science fiction."

  "It's like that movie! The one by Tony Scott, or was it Wim Wenders? Or maybe they both did one." Vliura leaned forward, eyes shining.

  But Aoyagi had never heard these names. "Like Nitieteen Eighty-Four/' he said, remembering the title of a book he'd read long ago.

  "Like the eighties?" Miura muttered, looking confused. "Anyway, they can't see everything—not absolutely everything. Not the inside of this crummy apartment, for example. They don't have their bugs or their cameras in a place like this. I guess there's no point in watching you at home unless you're some big shot." Aoyagi told him that they had located him as soon as he used his cell phone. "They can usually tell now where a phone is if it's turned on," Miura explained, as if this were common knowledge. "When a call goes out from a phone, they verify the number from the base station before they make the connection." He sounded like a teacher keeping it simple for a slow student. "The site is stored in something called the 'home memory,' which is updated on an automatic basis. Apparently the pods can share data on your phone with the home memory, which means they can practically pinpoint a location. If you really want to stay out of their way, you should probably lose that phone."

  "1 already did," said Aoyagi. He had left it with the man selling magazines, which amounted to the same thing.

  "Smart move. They're listening in on most calls anyway," he added.

  "Listening in?" Aoyagi said, alarmed at this new possibility.

  "I don't mean someone's actually listening, but they're being recorded. T hey store the data, and then they can access it when they need to. So, for example, they're probably looking at the records from all the calls you've made or received from that number. But if you look at it the other way

  THE INCIDENT

  around, the only thing they have to connect you to a call is the number, so it's fairly safe to use another phone."

  "Why's that?"

  "It's just common sense. It'd be almost impossible to find your voiceprint out there among all the calls being made. The data set is too big—it would take forever."

  "So I could use someone else's phone?"

  "Theoretically, except they might also be tracking the people you were calling, anyone connected to you in some way."

  .Aoyagi thought of Kazu. They had probably been watching his incoming calls. What about Koume Inohara? Did thev know about his connection to

  j

  her? Or had she herself been a trap they'd laid for him from the beginning? He still didn't know.

  "But if they're recording everything, don't they end up with more data than they can handle?" Miura's explanation had raised some questions. "Even if they're only doing it in Sendai at the moment, there must be some limits to the storage capacity."

  "1 imagine they store the data for a given period and then dump it and start over. If they're covering the whole city, the cycle has to be pretty short— a day, two at most. Which means they can't go hack and look at what happened a while ago—the data gets overwritten on a rolling basis."

  "So thev have no memorv."

  "It's a system designed for real-time pursuit in a high-prohle case—like the bombing today at the parade. It'd be ideal for hunting down the guy who did that." He poked at the bridge of his glasses and stared at Aoyagi. "Oh . . . ," he murmured. ". . . And would you l)y any chance be that guy? Our local assassin?" An odd little pout turned down the corners of his mouth. Aoyagi hesitated tor a mcjment, unsure what to say. "No! You're kidding! Keally?!" He was aliiKJSt slujuting. "Let me shake your hand!" he saitl, grinning and holding out his own.

  "But 1 didn't do it," said Aoyagi. "T hey're just trying to make it look like I did."

  Miura let his hand tall back and was cpiiet lor a moment. He blinketl, jjushed at his glasses, and studied him. "Interesting," he said at kist, a smile revealing a row ol crooked teeth. "So they're training you. l unny, you don't seem like the type."

  REMOTE CONTROL

  "Or not funny at all."

  "So our Mr. Kobatozawa must be part of some special forces unit called up for the manhunt. They don't let regular cops walk around with a gun like that. Not in this country at least."

  "1 thought it seemed a bit weird," Aoyagi agreed. There was a sound somewhere outside and he stiffened and glanced at the window.

  "Don't worry," Miura told him. "It's just check-in time at the love hotel. Folks still have to get laid, even if the prime minister's been blowri to bits." He got up and disappeared into the kitchen, coming back with two cans of beer. Then he poured boiling water from an electric kettle into some cups of instant ramen. Aoyagi could feel his tension dissolving in the cloud of steam that rose from the Styrofoam tubs.

  "While we're waiting for this to cook, why not fill me in," Miura said. "It doesn't seem like an easy thing to do—frame someone for the murder of a top politico. How'd they manage it?" He pulled the tab on his beer, tapped it against Aoyagi's, and took a sip. "!'m all ears."

  Aoyagi was surprised that he felt no reluctance to talk about what had happened to him—on the contrary, he wanted to tell someone. "Where do I start?" he said.

  "At the beginning. Your father. So-and-so Aoyagi, married your mother. Miss So-and-so, who gave birth to you, their eldest, in such-and-such city. A happy childhood, top marks at school, captain of the baseball team. . . ." It was a fair impression of the master of ceremonies at a wedding reception, and Aoyagi realized he had begun to smile in spite of himself. He wasn't sure why, but he felt at ease for the first time since he had jumped out of Morita's car.

  So he started his story with meeting Morita that morning. There was a hirit of irony in Miura's occasional interjections—"You don't mean it!" "Oh my God!"—but his face was rapt atte
ntion, like a jeweler appraising a stone. When Aoyagi had finished, he agreed that he was being framed. "You should be pissed off," he said.

  "Thank you," said Aoyagi. "1 am."

  "Sounds like they've been planning this for months, laying traps for you. But why you? T here must have been people who made more sense, who had some connection to Kaneda."

  THE INCIDENT

  "I've been asking myself the same question." He put the beer can to his lips but then lowered it again. When he looked up, his eyes met Miura's.

  "Think I put something in it?" he asked. "Wouldn't be the first time today. I guess you have to be careful, but you don't have to worry about me. I'm harmless." Aoyagi glanced at the window without answering. A sliver of light was visible through the crack in the curtains. Streetlights, he decided. "Well, at least have some ramen," Miura said, sliding one of the cups across the table. "Or do you think that's poisoned, too?"

  Aoyagi picked up his chopsticks, feeling it would be childish to refuse. Steam rose from the broth as he pulled back the lid. It was the first warm food he'd had in hours, and his eyes watered as he slurped it up.

  They had been eating for a few minutes, when Miura suddenly broke the silence. "No way!" He put down his cup and leaned forward. "I just realized why you look so familiar. You're the one who rescued that girl a while back. The deliverv driver. I saw vou on TV, lots of times."

  Aoyagi smiled uncomfortably. He wasn't sure which was more disturbing—having his brief brush with fame come up in a place like this or having a serial killer as a fan.

  "But don't you see?" Miura went on. "That's why they picked you. People love to see a hero fall from grace. Plus, you're handsome, so people envy you. We'd all be happy to see you go down for something like this. 1 have to give them credit, they found the perfect scapegoat."