Hard Rain

by Barry Eisler

  I went to another spy shop in Shinjuku. This time I bought a pair of high-resolution night-vision goggles with a binocular magnification function. I also picked up another ASP baton. I’d developed a certain fondness for the things.

  Next I stopped at a sporting goods store and bought a pair of sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt, both in a flat black heavy cotton, and a pair of jogging shoes. It was hard to find the right footwear—almost everything the store had was multicolored and gaudy—but eventually I came upon a pair that was suitably dark. After I left the store I cut off the reflective strips that the manufacturer had thoughtfully placed across the heels to make joggers more visible at night. Getting hit by a car that might fail to see me wasn’t my primary concern.

  I had told Biddle that he should enter the Aoyama Bochi cemetery complex on Kayanoki-dori, from the Omotesando-dori entrance. That he should walk down the path about fifty meters, at which point he would see a tall obelisk on the left, the tallest structure in the cemetery. That he should wait there.

  At eight o’clock, when it was sufficiently dark, I slipped into the cemetery from the Gaiennishi-dori side, avoiding the regular entrances just in case anyone was prepositioned and waiting for me. An odd place for a jog, but not unheard of. As soon as I was inside, I pulled on the goggles. I could make out every marker and bush in bright green. I saw bats sailing among the trees, a cat slinking from behind a stone.

  I set up near the obelisk, inside a memorial shaped like a triple pagoda. The pagoda offered me excellent concealment and a three-hundred-sixty-degree vantage point.

  Biddle showed up at ten sharp. He was as punctual about spycraft as he was about his tea.

  I watched him make his way to the obelisk. He was wearing an open trench coat, a suit and tie beneath it. Very cloak and dagger. For ten minutes I scanned the perimeter of the cemetery, using the goggles as night-vision binoculars, until I was satisfied he was alone. Then I eased out and made my way to where he was standing.

  He didn’t hear me until I spoke from a meter away. “Biddle,” I said.

  “Jesus!” he said, jumping and spinning to face me.

  I could see him squinting in the darkness. In the white/green of the goggles, I logged every detail of his expression.

  Harry’s detector was motionless in my pocket. With my good arm, I slipped the baton out from one of the sweatpants pockets. Biddle missed the movement in the dark.

  “There’s a small problem,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I need you to do a better job convincing me that you had nothing to do with Haruyoshi Fukasawa’s death.”

  I saw his brow furrow in the green glow. “Look, I already told you . . . ,” he started to say.

  I snapped the baton out and backhanded it into his forward shin, holding back a little at the end because it was too soon to break anything. He shrieked and fell to the ground, clutching his wounded leg. I gave him a minute to roll around while I scanned the area. Except for Biddle, all was silent.

  “No more noise,” I told him. “Stay quiet, or I’ll make you quiet.”

  He gritted his teeth and looked to where my voice had come from. “Goddamn it, I’ve told you everything I know,” he said, gasping.

  “You didn’t tell me you’re working with Yamaoto. That the one who’s been keeping Crepuscular alive is you, not Kanezaki.”

  His eyes were wide, searching for me in the darkness. “Kanezaki is paying you, isn’t he?” he groaned.

  I considered for a moment. “No. No one’s paying me. For once, I’m doing something just because I want to. Although I wouldn’t call that good news, from your perspective.”

  “Well, I can pay you. The Agency can. It’s a new world we’re in, and I told you we want you to be a part of it.”

  I chuckled. “You sound like a recruiting billboard. Now tell me about Yamaoto.”

  “I’m serious. Post Nine-Eleven, the Agency needs people like you. This is why we’ve been looking for you.”

  “I’m going to ask my question again. For free. If I have to repeat myself after this, though, the shot that just put you on the ground is going to seem like a caress.”

  There was a long pause, then he said, “All right.” He got slowly to his feet, keeping his weight off his injured leg. “Look, Yamaoto has his interests, and we have ours. There’s just an alignment right now, that’s all. An alliance of convenience.”

  “To what end? I thought Crepuscular was supposed to help reformers here.”

  He nodded. “Reform would be good for the U.S. in the long term, but it would also create problems. Look, Japan is the world’s largest creditor. It has over three hundred billion dollars invested in U.S. treasury bills alone. In the short term, real reform would mean Japanese bank closings, bank closings would mean bank runs, and bank runs would force banks to repatriate their overseas capital to cover fleeing depositors. If reforms eventually work, though, and the economy improves, yen-based holdings will become more attractive, and Japanese banks will move their dollar-and Euro-based holdings home, where they might earn a better return.”

  He had pulled himself together pretty nicely. Maybe I hadn’t been giving him enough credit.

  “So whoever’s calling the shots in the USG right now prefers the status quo,” I said.

  “We like to refer to it as ‘stability,” ’ he said, putting some weight on his injured leg and wincing.

  I scanned the area around us. All quiet. “Because the status quo keeps all those trillions of yen safely parked in the U.S., where they prop up the American economy.”

  “That’s right. To put it crudely, America is addicted to a continuing influx of foreign capital to support its deficit spending, and it gets the balance of its fix from Japan. There are elements in the USG that don’t want that to change.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not crude, it’s nicely put. America is addicted to cheap oil, and props up brutal regimes in the Middle East to feed its habit. If the USG is supporting corrupt elements in Japan because those elements guarantee continued access to Japanese capital, Uncle Sam is just being consistent.”

  “I suppose that’s not unfair. But I don’t make policy. I just carry it out.”

  “So this is why Crepuscular was shut down six months ago,” I said. “Some newly ascendant faction in the USG decided that it wasn’t in Uncle Sam’s interest to further reform in Japan after all.”

  “The opposite,” he said. He started to put his hands in his trench coat pockets.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” I said sharply.

  He jumped. “Sorry, I’m just a little cold. How can you see anything, anyway? It’s pitch dark out here.”

  “What do you mean, ‘the opposite’?”

  “Crepuscular was never intended to further reform. It was conceived as a way of suborning reformers from the beginning. Whoever ordered its termination was a supporter of reform. But certainly not a realist.”

  “You would be one of the realists, then.”

  He straightened slightly. “That’s right. Along with some of the institutions that make U.S. foreign policy. The ones without blinders or the pressure of political constituencies. Look, the politicians press Japan to reform because they don’t understand what’s really going on. And what’s really going on is that Japan is past reform. Maybe ten, even five years ago, it could have been done. But not anymore. Things have gone too far here. The politicians in America are always talking about ‘biting the bullet’ and ‘strong medicine,’ but they don’t understand that if you try to bite this bullet, it’ll go through your head. That the patient is so weak, an operation would kill him. We’re past hope of a cure, it’s time to move into more of a pain-management approach.”

  “It’s a moving story, Dr. Kevorkian. But I’m ready to hear the end.”

  “The end?”

  “Yes. The part that goes, ‘Here’s the combination to my safe.” ’

  “The combination . . . oh no. No, no, no,” he said, alar
m creeping into his voice. “How did he talk you into this? What did he tell you—those reformers are heroes? For God’s sake, they’re just like all the other politicians in this damn country, they’re just as selfish and venal. Kanezaki doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  I shot the baton into his wounded leg again. He screamed and went down.

  “Quiet,” I said. “Or I’ll do the same to your arms.”

  He clenched his teeth and rocked on his back, one arm holding his leg, the other arm jerking left to right in front of his head in a vain attempt to ward off the next attack.

  “I warned you about making me ask you something twice,” I said. “Now spit it out. Or they won’t even be able to use dental records to ID you.”

  I saw his jaw working in the green glow. He groaned and clutched his leg. Finally he said, “Thirty-two twice left, four once right, twelve left.”

  I took out the cell phone and speed-dialed Kanezaki. “Hello?” I heard him say.

  I repeated the number.

  “Hold on.” A few seconds passed. “I’m in,” I heard him say.

  “You find what you were looking for?”

  I heard papers rustling. “Big time,” he said.

  I clicked off.

  “There’s a marker about a meter to your right,” I told him. “You can use it to stand.”

  He pulled himself in the right direction and got slowly to his feet, using the marker to support himself. He slumped against it, panting, his face slicked with sweat.

  “You knew they were going to do Harry,” I said. “Didn’t you.”

  I saw him shake his head. “No.”

  “But you suspected.”

  “I suspect everything. I’m paid to suspect. That’s not the same as knowing.”

  “Why did you ask me to kill Kanezaki?”

  “I think you know,” he said, his breathing getting a little more even. “If those receipts were used, someone would have to be blamed for it. It would be best if that person weren’t in a position to tell his side of the story.”

  “Is he still in any danger?”

  He chuckled ruefully. “Not if those receipts are no longer in play, no.”

  “You don’t seem too upset.”

  He shrugged. “I’m a professional. None of this is personal for me. I hope the same goes for you.”

  “What happens to Crepuscular?”

  He sighed and looked a little wistful. “Crepuscular? It’s gone. It was shut down six months ago.”

  He was already reciting the official story. No wonder he’d recovered his serenity so quickly. He knew he wasn’t going to face any personal—meaning career—repercussions.

  I looked at him for a long time. I thought of Harry, of Tatsu, most of all of Midori. Finally I said, “I’m going to let you leave here, Biddle. The smart thing would be to kill you, but I won’t. That means you owe me. If you repay that debt by trying to get back into my life, I’ll find you.”

  “I believe you,” he said.

  “When we walk out of here tonight, we walk away—agreed?”

  “We still need you,” he said. “There’s still a place for you.”

  I waited for a moment in the darkness. He realized that he hadn’t answered my question. I saw him flinch.

  “Agreed,” he said, his voice low.

  I turned and left. He could find his own way out.

  I met Tatsu the next day, on a sunny boulevard beneath a maple tree in Yoyogi Park. I briefed him on what I’d learned from Biddle.

  “Kanezaki recovered the receipts,” he told me. “And promptly destroyed them. It’s as though they never existed. After all, Crepuscular was discontinued six months ago.”

  “That kid is naïve, but he’s got balls,” I said.

  Tatsu nodded, his eyes momentarily melancholy. “He has a good heart.”

  I smiled. It wouldn’t be like Tatsu to admit that someone might have a good head.

  “I have a feeling you haven’t seen the last of him,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I would hope not. Getting those receipts back was lucky. But I have much more to do.”

  “You can only do so much, Tatsu. Remember that.”

  “But still we must do something, ne? Don’t forget, modern Japan was born of samurai from the southern provinces seizing the imperial palace in Kyoto and declaring the restoration of the Meiji emperor. Perhaps something like that could happen again. Perhaps a rebirth of democracy.”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  He turned to me. “What will you do, Rain-san?”

  I looked out at the trees. “I’m thinking about that.”

  “Work with me.”

  “You’re a broken record, Tatsu.”

  “You sound like my wife again.”

  I laughed.

  “How does it feel, to have been part of something larger than yourself?” he asked.

  I held up my taped and plastered arm. “Like this,” I said.

  He smiled his sad smile. “That only means you are alive.”

  I shrugged. “I admit it beats the alternatives.”

  “If you need anything, ever, call me,” he said.

  I stood. He followed suit.

  We bowed and shook hands. I walked away.

  I walked for a long time. East, toward Tokyo station, toward the bullet train that would take me back to Osaka. Tatsu knew where to find me there, but I could live with that for the time being.

  I wondered what I would do when I got there. Yamada, my alter ego, was nearly ready to move. But I no longer knew where to send him.

  I needed to contact Naomi. I wanted to contact her. I just didn’t know what I was going to say.

  Yamaoto was still out there. Tatsu had dealt him a few solid blows, but he was still standing. Probably still looking for me. And maybe the Agency with him.

  As I walked, the sky grew darker. A wind shook the branches of the city’s pollution-inured trees.

  Tatsu had been upbeat. I wondered what deep wellspring fed his optimism. I wished I could share it. But I was too aware of Harry in the ground, of Midori gone for good, of Naomi waiting for an uncertain answer.

  Fat droplets of rain started splattering against the city’s concrete skin, against the glass windows of its eyes. A few people with umbrellas opened them. The rest ran for cover.

  I walked on, through it all. I tried to think of it as a baptism, a new beginning.

  Maybe it was. But what a lonely resurrection.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Readers familiar with Roppongi and Akasaka-Mitsuke in Tokyo will note that while several hostess bars and “gentlemen’s clubs” resemble Damask Rose, none is an exact match. Otherwise, the Tokyo and Osaka locales that appear in this book are described as I have found them.

  DEEPEST THANKS

  To a remarkable transpacific team of agents and editors: my agents, Nat Sobel and Judith Weber of Sobel Weber Associates in New York and Ken Mori of Tuttle Mori in Tokyo; and my editors, David Highfill of Putnam in New York and Masaru Suzuki of Sony’s Village Books in Tokyo, for all their continued enthusiasm, insight, and support.

  To my dear friend and sensei Koichiro Fukasawa of Wasabi-Communications, for continuing to shine a clear light on so much of Japan and the Japanese—and for a great website, too.

  To Evan Rosen, M.D., Ph.D., and Peter Zimetbaum, M.D., both of the Harvard medical system, for consistently overcoming their queasiness at my questions about the medical implications of killing techniques, for accepting that the Hippocratic oath might not apply to fiction, and for assisting John Rain in all his endeavors with their considerable knowledge and imaginative faculties.

  To Lori Andreini, for her insights into what sophisticated, sexy women like Midori and Naomi wear and how they think, and for helpful comments on the manuscript.

  To Ernie Tibaldi, a thirty-one-year veteran agent of the FBI, for generously sharing his extensive surveillance and investigative experiences, for recommending many good books and other sources of information
, and for helpful comments on the manuscript.

  To Carla Mendes, for furthering my understanding of Brazil and Brazilians and for refining Rain’s attempts at Portuguese.

  To Marc “Animal” MacYoung and Peyton Quinn, warrior philosophers both, for their many excellent books and videos on violence and street etiquette. In particular, John Rain owes to MacYoung his philosophy regarding unarmed defenses against the knife, and to Quinn the notion of being “interviewed” as a potential victim.

  To Masao Miyamoto, for his horrifyingly humorous book Straitjacket Society, some of whose ideas on the nature of Big Brother in Japan Tatsu has borrowed.

  To Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, for his disturbing, original book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, which provided so many insights into the origins and psychology of John Rain.

  To Alex Kerr, for his book Dogs and Demons, a meticulously researched and argued account of Japanese corruption and an insensate bureaucracy gone mad, which provided some of the back story for the novel.

  To Alan Eisler, Judy Eisler, Dan and Naomi Levin, Matthew Powers, Owen Rennert, David and Shari Rosenblatt, Ted Schlein, Hank Shiffman, and Pete Wenzel, for helpful comments on the manuscript and many valuable suggestions and insights along the way.

  To Rick Kennedy and the staff of Tokyo Q, for introducing John Rain to several of the Tokyo bars and restaurants that appear in this book.

  To the proprietors of the following establishments, all wonderful places to call one’s office: Bar Satoh in Miyakojima-ku, Osaka; Café Borrone in Menlo Park, California; Las Chicas in Aoyama, Tokyo; the public library in Mountain View, California; These Library Lounge in Nishi Azabu, Tokyo.

  Most of all, to a great editor, my fiercest supporter, and my best friend, my wife, Laura.

  John Rain series:

  1. Rain Fall (2002)

  2. Hard Rain (2003) aka Blood from Blood

  3. Rain Storm (2004) aka Choke Point

  4. Killing Rain (2005)aka One Last Kill

  5. The Last Assassin (2006)