by Barry Eisler
He paused for a long moment, then looked at me squarely, his eyes resigned. “I deeply regret the pain you feel now. However, I’m more convinced even than before that I did the right thing in telling her. Your situation was impossible. It’s much better that she know nothing of your involvement in her father’s death. Think of what such knowledge would have done to her after what had happened between you.”
I wasn’t even surprised that Tatsu had put together all the pieces. “She didn’t have to know,” I heard myself say.
“At some level, I believe she already did. Your presence would eventually have confirmed her suspicions. Instead, she is left with memories of the hero’s death you died in completing her father’s last wishes.”
I realized, but couldn’t quite grasp, that Midori had already been made part of my past. It was like a magic trick. Now you see it, now you don’t. Now it’s real, now it’s just a memory.
“If I may say so,” he said, “her affair with you was brief. There’s no reason to expect her grief over your loss will be prolonged.”
“Thanks, Tatsu,” I managed to say. “That’s a comfort.”
He bowed his head. It would be unseemly for him to give voice to his conflicted feelings, and anyway he would still do what he had to. Giri and ninjo. Duty and human feeling. In Japan, the first is always primary.
“I still don’t understand,” I said after a minute. “I thought you wanted to publish what’s on the disk. It would vindicate all your theories about conspiracies and corruption.”
“Ending the conspiracies and corruption is more important than vindicating my theories about them.”
“Aren’t they one and the same? Bulfinch said if the contents of the disk were public, the Japanese media would have no choice but to follow up, that Yamaoto’s power would be extinguished.”
He nodded slowly. “There is some truth to that. But publishing the disk is like launching a nuclear missile. You only get to do it once, and it results in complete destruction.”
“So? Launch the missile. Destroy the corruption.”
He sighed, his sympathy for the shock I had just experienced perhaps ameliorating the impatience he usually felt in having to spell everything out for me. “In Japan, the corruption is the society. The rust has penetrated so deep that the superstructure is made of it. You cannot simply rip it all out without precipitating a collapse of the society that rests on it.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “If it’s that corrupt, let it go.”
“Rain-san,” he said, a tiny note of impatience in his voice, “have you considered what would rise from the ashes?”
“What do you mean?”
“Put yourself in Yamaoto’s place. Plan A is to use the threat of the disk to control the LDP from the shadows. Plan B is to detonate the disk—to publish it—to destroy the LDP and put Conviction in power.”
“Because the tape implicates only the LDP,” I said, beginning to understand.
“Of course. Conviction seems a model of probity by comparison. Yamaoto would have to step out of the shadows, but he would finally have a platform from which to move the nation to the right. In fact, I believe this is his ultimate hope.”
“Why do you say that?
“There are signs. Certain public figures have been praising some of the prewar Imperial rescripts on education, the notion of the Japanese as a ‘divine people,’ and other matters. Mainstream politicians are openly visiting Shinto shrines like Yasukuni and its interred World War II soldiers, despite the costs incurred abroad by such visits. I believe Yamaoto orchestrates these events from the shadows.”
“I didn’t know you were so liberal on these things, Tatsu.”
“I am pragmatic. It matters little to me which way the country moves, as long as the move is not accompanied by Yamaoto’s means of control.”
I considered. “After what’s happened to Bulfinch and Holtzer, Yamaoto is going to figure out the disk wasn’t destroyed, that you have it. He was already coming after you. It’s only going to get worse.”
“I am not such an easy man to get to, as you know.”
“You’re taking a lot of chances.”
“I am playing for stakes.”
“I guess you know what you’re doing,” I said, not caring anymore.
He looked at me, his face impassive. “There is another reason I must be careful with the disk’s contents. It implicates you.”
I had to smile. “Really?”
“I had been looking for the assassin for a long time, Rain-san—there have been so many convenient deaths of ‘natural causes.’ I always knew he was out there, although everyone else believed I was chasing a phantom. And now that I’ve found him, I realize he is you.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“That’s for you to decide.”
“Meaning?”
“As I’ve told you, I’ve deleted all evidence of your activities, even of your existence, from the Keisatsucho’s databases.”
“But there’s still the disk. Is this your way of telling me you’re going to have leverage over me?”
He shook his head, and I saw the momentary disappointment at my characteristic American lack of subtlety. “I am uninterested in such leverage. It isn’t the way I would treat a friend. Moreover, knowing your character and your capabilities, I recognize the exertion of such leverage would be futile, and possibly dangerous.”
Amazing. The guy had just put me in jail, failed to publish the disk as he had implied he would, sent Midori to America and told her I was dead, and yet I felt ashamed I had insulted him.
“You are therefore free to return to your life in the shadows,” he went on. “But I must ask you, Rain-san, is this really the life you want?”
I didn’t answer.
“May I say I had never seen you more… complete than you were in Vietnam. And I believe I know why. Because at heart you are samurai. In Vietnam you thought you had found your master, your cause larger than yourself.”
What he said hit a nerve.
“You were not the same man when we met again in Japan after the war. Your master must have disappointed you terribly for you to have become ronin.” A ronin is literally a floater on the waves, a wanderer. A masterless samurai.
He waited for me to answer, but I didn’t. Finally he said, “Is what I am saying inaccurate?”
“No,” I admitted, thinking of Crazy Jake.
“You are samurai, Rain-san. But samurai cannot be samurai without a master. The master is yin to the samurai’s yang. One cannot properly exist without the other.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Tatsu?”
“My battle with what plagues Japan is far from over. My acquisition of the disk provides me with an important weapon in that battle. But it is not enough. I need you with me.”
“You don’t understand, Tatsu. You don’t get burned by one master and just find another. The scars go too deep.”
“What is your alternative?”
“The alternative is to be my own master. As I have been.”
He waved his hand as if to dismiss such nonsense. “This is not possible for human beings. Any more than reproduction is possible through masturbation.”
His uncharacteristic crudeness surprised me, and I laughed. “I don’t know, Tatsu. I don’t know if I can trust you that much. You’re a manipulative bastard. Look what you’ve been up to while I’ve been in jail.”
“Whether I’m manipulative and whether you can trust me are two different matters,” he said, easily able to compartmentalize such things because he was Japanese.
“I’ll think about it,” I told him.
“That’s all I would ask.”
“Now let me out of here.”
He motioned to the door. “You’ve been free to go since I came in.”
I gave him a small smile. “You should have said so sooner. We could have done this over coffee.”
CHAPTER 25
I took my time getting back to
Tatsu. There were a few things I needed to settle first.
Harry, for one. He had hacked the Keisatsucho files the same day I ambushed Holtzer at Yokosuka, so he knew I’d been arrested. Several days later, he told me, all references to me had been deleted from their files.
“When I saw those files had been deleted,” he said, “I thought they had disappeared you. I figured you were dead.”
“That’s what people are supposed to believe,” I said.
“Why?”
“They want my help with certain matters.”
“That’s why they let you go?”
“Nothing for nothing, Harry. You know that.” I told him about Midori.
“Maybe that’s for the best,” he said.
He had most of the pieces, I knew. But what would be the use of either of us acknowledging any of that?
“What are you going to do now?” he asked me.
“I haven’t figured all that out yet.”
“If you ever need a good hacker, you know where to find me.”
“I don’t know, Harry. You had a lot of trouble with that music lattice reduction or whatever the hell it was. The Keisatsucho cracked it no problem.”
“Hey, those guys have access to supercomputers at Japanese universities!” he sputtered, before noticing my grin. Then: “Very funny.”
“I’ll be in touch,” I told him. “I’m just going to take a little vacation first.”
I flew out to Washington D.C., where Tatsu said they had shipped Holtzer. Processing his “retirement” would take a few days, even weeks, and in the meantime he’d be in the Langely area.
I thought I’d be able to find him by calling all the hotels listed in the suburban Virginia Yellow Pages. I worked my way outward from Langely in concentric circles, but there was no guest named William Holtzer at any of them. Probably he had checked in somewhere under an assumed name, using cash and no credit cards, afraid I might be coming after him.
What about a car, though? I started phoning the 800 numbers of the major rent-a-car companies. It was William Holtzer calling, wanting to extend his service contract. Avis didn’t have a record of a William Holtzer. Hertz did. The clerk was kind enough to tell me the plate number, which I told him I needed for some supplementary insurance I wanted to get through my credit card company. I was ready for him to ask why I didn’t just get the information from the key chain or the car itself, but he never did. After that, all I had to do was search a DMV database to learn that Holtzer was driving a white Ford Taurus.
Back to concentric circles. That night I drove through the parking lots of the major hotels closest to Langely, slowing to examine the license plate of every white Ford Taurus I passed.
At about two o’clock that morning I found Holtzer’s car in the parking garage of the Ritz Carlton, Tyson’s Corner. After confirming the license-plate, I drove over to the nearby Marriott, where I took the license plates from a parked car. At the edge of the deserted parking lot of the Tyson’s Corner Galleria, I switched the plates over to the rental van I was driving. The new plates and the light disguise I was wearing would be enough to beat any unforeseen witnesses or security cameras.
I drove back to the Ritz. The spaces adjacent to the Taurus were taken, but there was an empty spot behind it to one side. It was better not to park alongside him anyway. If you’re savvy about the ways of my world, or even just sensitive to where and how you’re likely to be mugged, you’ll get nervous if you see a van parked right next to your car. Especially a model with darkened rear windows, like mine. I pulled in, nose forward so the van’s sliding door would be facing Holtzer.
I checked my equipment. A 250,000-volt “Thunder Blaster” guaranteed to cause disorientation upon contact and unconsciousness in less than five seconds. A medium-sized pink rubber Super Ball, available for eighty-nine cents at pretty much any drugstore. A portable defibrillation kit like the ones some airlines are beginning to keep on their commercial jets, small enough to tote around in an ordinary briefcase and considerably more expensive than the Super Ball.
Shocking someone out of a ventricular fibrillation is tricky business. Three hundred sixty joules is a massive dose of electricity. If a shock like that is applied at the top of the heart’s T wave—that is, between beats—you’ll induce a lethal arrhythmia. Modern defibrillators, therefore, have sensors that automatically detect the QRS complex of the heartbeat, which is the only instant at which the shock can safely be applied.
Of course, the same software that’s designed to avoid the T wave can be reconfigured to initiate on it.
I reclined the electronic seat a few degrees and relaxed. It was a safe bet Holtzer would be heading over to the CIA’s campus sometime in the morning, so I expected to have to wait only a few more hours.
At six-thirty, about a half hour before it would get light outside, I went to the back of the van and urinated in a plastic jug. I limbered up for a few minutes, then enjoyed a breakfast of cold coffee and Chicken McNuggets, left over from the previous evening. The culinary joys of surveillance.
Holtzer showed an hour later. I watched him emerge from the elevator and head toward me. He was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, dark tie—standard Beltway attire, practically Agency issue.
His mind was elsewhere. I could see it in his expression, his posture, the way he failed to check the likely hot spots in the garage, especially around his car. Shame on him, being so careless in a potential crime zone like a parking garage.
I slipped on a pair of black cowhide gloves. A click of the switch on the Thunder Blaster produced a sharp arc of blue sparks and an electric crackle. I was ready to go.
I scanned the garage, satisfying myself that for the moment it was empty. Then I slipped to the back of the van and watched him move to the driver side of the Taurus, where he paused to remove his suit jacket. Good, I thought. Let’s not get any wrinkles on your funeral suit.
I waited until the jacket was just past his shoulders, the spot that would make effective reaction most awkward for him, then swung the van’s side door open and moved in on him. He looked up when he heard the door open, but had no chance to do anything but drop his mouth open in surprise. Then I was on him, my right hand jamming the Thunder Blaster into his belly, my left propping him up by the throat while the shock scrambled his central nervous system.
It took less than six seconds to drag his dazed form into the van and slide the door shut behind us. I pushed him onto the ample backseat, then gave him another hit with the Thunder Blaster to make sure he was incapacitated long enough for me to finish.
The moves were routine and it didn’t take long. I buckled him in with the lap and shoulder belt, pulling the latter all the way out and then letting it retract fully until it was locked in place. The hardest part was getting his shirt open and his tie out of the way so I could apply the paddles directly to his torso, where the conducting jelly would prevent any telltale burn marks. The seatbelt and shoulder restraint kept him in place while I worked.
As I applied the second paddle, his eyes fluttered open. He glanced down at his exposed chest, then looked up at me.
“Way… way…” he stammered.
“Wait?” I asked.
He grunted, I guessed to affirm.
“Sorry, can’t do that,” I said, affixing the second paddle with medical tape.
He opened his mouth to say something else and I shoved the Super Ball into it. I didn’t want him to bite his tongue from the force of the shock—it could look suspicious.
I shifted to the side of the van to make sure I wasn’t touching him when the shock was delivered. He watched me as I moved, his eyes wide.
“For Jimmy,” I said, looking into his eyes. “And Cu Lai. Say hello for me.”
I flicked the switch on the unit.
His body jerked forward to the limit of the automatically locking shoulder belt and his head arched backward into the anti-whiplash head restraint. Cars are amazingly safe these days.
I waited for
a minute, then checked his pulse to be sure he was finished. Satisfied, I removed the ball and the paddles, wiped off the conducting jelly residue with an alcohol swab, and fixed his clothes. I looked into his dead eyes and was surprised how little I felt. Relieved, maybe. Satisfied. Not much more.
I opened the door of the Taurus with his key, then placed it in the car’s ignition. I scanned the garage again. A woman in a business suit, probably on her way to an early meeting, came out of the elevator. I waited for her to get in her car and drive off.
Using a modified fireman’s carry, I scooped up the body, walked it over to the car, and dumped it into the driver’s seat. I closed the door, then paused for a moment to examine my work.
Yes, for Jimmy, I thought. And Cu Lai. They’ve all been waiting for you in hell.
And waiting for me. I wondered if Holtzer would be enough to satisfy them. I got into the van and drove away.
CHAPTER 26
I had one more stop to make. Manhattan, 178 Seventh Avenue South. The Village Vanguard.
I had checked the Vanguard’s website, and knew the Midori Kawamura trio was appearing at the club from the first Tuesday in November through the following Sunday. I called and made a reservation for the 1:00 A.M. set on Friday. They told me they would hold a reservation until fifteen minutes before the set even without a credit card, so I was easily able to use an alias: Watanabe, a common Japanese name.
I headed up Interstate 95, crossing from Maryland to Delaware and then to New Jersey. From the Turnpike, I could have picked up I-80 and gone on to Dryden, two hundred miles and someone else’s lifetime away.
Instead, I left the Turnpike for the Holland Tunnel, where I entered the city and drove the quarter mile to the Soho Grand Hotel on West Broadway. Mr. Watanabe had reserved a suite for Friday night. He arrived before six o’clock to ensure the hotel didn’t give away his reservation, and paid cash for the suite, counting out fourteen hundred dollar bills for the night. The staff, to their credit, evinced no surprise, probably guessing the wealthy man with a passion for anonymity would be meeting his mistress.