Aomame was on the verge of asking him how many moons he had seen in that clear sky, but she stopped herself. It was too fraught with danger. Tamaru had told her about his life last time—about having been raised as an orphan who never knew his parents’ faces, about his nationality. He had never spoken at such length before, but he was not a man much given to talking about himself in any case. He had taken a personal liking to Aomame and had more or less opened himself up to her. But ultimately, he was a professional, trained to take the shortest route to see his mission through. There was no point in saying too much to him.
“I think I can get there around seven o’clock tomorrow night after work,” she said.
“Fine,” Tamaru said. “You’ll probably be hungry. The cook is off tomorrow, so we can’t serve you anything decent, but if a sandwich or something is all right with you, I can do the preparations.”
“Thanks,” Aomame said.
“You’ll be needing your driver’s license, your passport, and your health insurance card. We’d like you to bring those tomorrow. Plus, we’d like a copy of your apartment key. Can you have all those ready for us?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“And one more thing. I’d like to see you alone about that business from before. So keep some time open for me after you’re through with Madame.”
“Business from before?”
Tamaru fell silent for a moment. His silence had all the weight of a sandbag. “I believe there was something you wanted to get ahold of. Have you forgotten?”
“No, of course I remember,” Aomame hurried to say. In a corner of her mind, she had still been thinking about the moons.
“Tomorrow at seven, then,” Tamaru said and hung up.
The number of moons had not changed the following night. When she took a quick shower after work and left the club, two pale-colored moons had already appeared side by side in the still-bright sky. Aomame stood on the pedestrian footbridge spanning Gaien-nishi Dori Avenue, leaning against the handrail and gazing at the two moons for a time. No one else made a point of looking at the moons like this. The people passing by did no more than cast puzzled glances in Aomame’s direction as she stood there looking up at the sky. They hurried toward the subway station as if they had absolutely no interest in either the sky or the moon. As she gazed upward, Aomame began to feel the same physical lassitude she had experienced the day before. I have to stop staring at the moons like this, she told herself. It can’t have a good effect on me. But try as she might not to look at the moons, she could not help feeling their gaze against her skin. Even if I don’t look at them, they’re looking at me. They know what I’m about to do.
Using ornate cups from a bygone era, the dowager and Aomame drank thick hot coffee. The dowager dribbled in a little milk at the edge of her cup and drank the coffee without stirring it. She used no sugar. Aomame drank hers black, as usual. Tamaru served them the sandwiches he had promised. He had cut them into bite-sized pieces. Aomame ate several. They were simple cucumber and cheese sandwiches on brown bread, but were subtly flavored. Tamaru had a fine touch in making such simple dishes, wielding a kitchen knife with skill, cutting each of his ingredients to the perfect size and thickness. He knew the proper order with which to undertake each task. This was all it took to make an amazing difference in how things tasted.
“Have you finished organizing your things?” the dowager asked.
“I donated my extra clothing and books to charity. I’ve packed a bag with everything I’ll need in my new life, ready to go at any time. The only things left in my apartment are the basics I’ll need for the time being: electrical appliances, cookware, bed and bedding, a few dishes.”
“We’ll take care of anything that’s left. And you don’t have to think about your lease or other such details. You can just walk out with the few things you really need in your luggage.”
“Should I let them know at work? It could raise suspicions if I suddenly disappeared one day.”
The dowager quietly returned her coffee cup to the table. “You don’t have to think about that, either.”
Aomame responded with a nod. She ate another sandwich and took a sip of coffee.
“By the way, do you have money in the bank?” the dowager asked. “I have six hundred thousand yen in a regular savings account and two million yen in a CD.”
The dowager did some calculations. “There’s no problem with your withdrawing up to four hundred thousand yen from the savings account if you do it in stages, but don’t touch the CD. It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to cancel it all of a sudden. They might be watching your personal affairs. We can’t be too careful. I’ll cover the difference later. Do you have any other property or assets?”
“There’s the money you paid me before. It’s just sitting in a safe-deposit box.”
“Take the cash out, but don’t keep it in your apartment. Think about someplace good to put it.”
“All right.”
“That’s all we need you to do for now. Otherwise, just go about your business as usual, not changing your lifestyle or doing anything that would attract attention. And make sure you don’t talk about anything important on the telephone.”
Once she had finished saying this much, the dowager settled more deeply into her chair, as if she had used up her entire reserve of energy.
“Has the date been set?” Aomame asked.
“Not yet, unfortunately,” the dowager said. “We’re still waiting for them to contact us. The arrangements have been made, but they won’t decide their schedule until the last minute. It could be another week, or it could be another month. We don’t know the place, either. We just have to ask you to stand by, I’m afraid, on pins and needles.”
“I don’t mind waiting,” Aomame said, “but I wonder if you can give me even a general idea about the ‘arrangements.’ ”
“You’ll be giving him a muscle-stretching session,” the dowager said. “What you always do. He has some kind of physical problems. They’re not life-threatening, but we’ve heard they give him a lot of trouble. In addition to orthodox medicine, he’s tried a number of alternative treatments in an attempt to solve these ‘problems’—shiatsu, acupuncture, massage—but none of them seems to help. These physical problems are the only weak spot of this man they call ‘Leader.’ It’s the breach in his defenses that we’ve been looking for.”
The curtains were drawn on the window behind the dowager, concealing the moons, but Aomame could feel their cool gaze against her skin. Their conspiratorial silence seemed to be stealing into the room.
“We have a spy inside the Sakigake organization, and we’ve used him to pass the word that you are an outstanding expert in muscle stretching. This was not especially difficult, because it happens to be true. Now they are very interested in you. At first, they wanted to bring you into their compound in Yamanashi, but we made it clear that you are far too busy with your work to leave Tokyo. In any case, the man comes to Tokyo at least once a month on business. He stays incognito in a downtown hotel. You will be giving him a stretching session there. All you have to do is take the usual steps with him once you’re inside.”
Aomame imagined the scene. A hotel room. A man is lying on a yoga mat, and she is stretching his muscles. She can’t see his face. On his stomach, he leaves the back of his neck exposed to her, defenseless. She reaches over and takes the ice pick from her bag.
“So he and I can be alone together in his room?” Aomame asked.
The dowager nodded. “Leader keeps his physical problems hidden from others in the organization, so there should be no one else present. You and he will be alone.”
“Do they know my name and where I work?”
“They are exceedingly cautious people. They’ve already done a thorough background check on you and found no problems. We received word yesterday that they will want you to come to where he is staying. They will let us know as soon as the time and place are set.”
“I come here so oft
en, don’t you think there is some chance they will find our relationship suspicious?”
“I’m just a member of the sports club where you work, and you come to my house as a personal trainer. They have no reason to think that there might be any more to our relationship than that.”
Aomame responded with a nod.
The dowager said, “Whenever this Leader person leaves the compound and moves around, he has two bodyguards who accompany him. Both are believers and karate belt holders. We don’t know yet if they also carry weapons, but they are apparently good at what they do. They train every day. According to Tamaru, though, they are amateurs.”
“Unlike Tamaru.”
“Yes, unlike Tamaru. He used to belong to a Self-Defense Force Ranger unit. Those people have it pounded into them to carry out whatever needs to be done to accomplish the mission, and to do it instantly, without the slightest hesitation. The important thing is not to hesitate, no matter who the opponent might be. Amateurs hesitate—especially when the opponent is, say, a young woman.”
The dowager sank her head back into the chair and sighed deeply. Then she straightened herself again and looked directly at Aomame.
“The two bodyguards will most likely wait in the next room of the suite while you are administering your treatment to Leader. You’ll be alone with him for an hour. That is how we have set things up for now. How it will actually go is anybody’s guess. Things can be fluid. Leader never reveals his plan of action until the very last minute.”
“How old a man is he?”
“Probably in his mid-fifties. We’ve heard he’s a big man. Unfortunately, we don’t know any more than that.”
Tamaru was waiting at the front door. She gave him her spare apartment key, driver’s license, passport, and health insurance card. He stepped inside and made copies of the documents. After checking to see that he had all the necessary copies, he handed the originals back to Aomame. Then he showed Aomame to his office, which was next to the front door. It was a small, square space lacking any decoration. A tiny window opened to the garden. The wall-mounted air conditioner hummed along. He had Aomame sit in a small wooden chair, while he sat at his desk. On the wall above the desk hung a row of four monitor screens with changeable camera angles. Four video decks constantly recorded their images. The screens showed views outside the walls. The far right one displayed an image of the front door of the safe house where the women were living. The new guard dog was also visible, resting on the ground. It was somewhat smaller than the previous dog.
“The tape didn’t show how the dog died,” Tamaru said, as if anticipating a question from Aomame. “She wasn’t tied up at the time. There’s no way she could have untied herself, so possibly someone untied her.”
“Someone who could approach without causing her to bark.”
“That’s what it amounts to.”
“Strange.”
Tamaru nodded but said nothing. He had thought about the various possibilities so much on his own that he was sick of thinking about them. There was nothing left for him to say to anybody else.
Tamaru reached over and opened a drawer of the cabinet by his desk, taking out a black plastic bag. From the bag he took a faded blue bath towel, and when he spread the towel open, a lustrous black object emerged—a small automatic pistol. Saying nothing, he handed it to Aomame, who also remained silent as she took it. She tested the weight of it in her hand. It was much lighter than it appeared to be. Such a small, light object could deliver death to a human being.
“You just made two major mistakes. Do you know what they were?” Tamaru asked.
Aomame thought over the actions she had just taken but could discover no mistakes. All she had done was take the gun that was handed to her. “I don’t know,” she said.
“First, when you took the gun, you didn’t check to see if it was loaded or not and, if it was loaded, whether the safety was on. The second was that, after you took the gun, you pointed it—even if only for one split second—at me. You broke two absolute rules. Also, you should never put your finger inside the trigger guard if you have no intention of firing the gun.”
“I see. I’ll be careful from now on.”
“Emergency situations aside, you should never handle or hand over or carry a gun that has even one bullet in it. And whenever you see a gun, you should treat it as loaded until you know for sure otherwise. Guns are made to kill people. You can never be too careful with them. Some people might laugh at me for being too cautious, but stupid accidents happen all the time, and the ones who get killed or badly wounded are usually the ones who were laughing.”
Tamaru drew a plastic bag from his jacket pocket. Inside were seven new bullets. He set them on his desk. “As you can see, the bullets are not in the gun. The magazine is in place, but it’s empty. The chamber is empty, too.”
Aomame nodded.
“This is a personal gift from me. Even so, if you don’t use it, I’d like to have it back.”
“Of course,” Aomame said, her voice dry. “But it must have cost you something.”
“Don’t let that worry you,” Tamaru said. “You have other things to worry about. Let’s talk about those. Have you ever fired a gun?”
Aomame shook her head. “Never.”
“Revolvers tend to be easier to use than automatics, especially for amateurs. Their mechanism is simpler, and it’s easier to learn how to operate them, and you’re less likely to make mistakes with them. But a good revolver can be bulky and inconvenient to carry around. So I figured an automatic would be better for you. This is a Heckler & Koch HK4. A German make. Weighs 480 grams without bullets. It’s small and light, but its 9mm Short cartridges pack a punch, and it has a small recoil. It’s not very accurate for long distances, but it’s perfect for what you have in mind. Heckler & Koch started up after the war, but this HK4 is based on the Mauser HSc, a well-respected model from before the war. They’ve been making it since 1968, and it’s still widely used. So it’s dependable. This is not a new one, but it’s been well taken care of by somebody who obviously knew what he was doing. Guns are like cars: you can trust a good used one better than one that’s brand-new.”
Tamaru took the gun back from Aomame and showed her how to handle it—how to lock and unlock the safety, how to remove and replace the magazine.
“Make sure the safety is on when you take the magazine out. After you open the catch and pull the magazine out, you pull the slide back and the bullet pops out of the chamber—not now, of course, since the gun isn’t loaded. After that, the slide stays open, so then you pull the trigger like this and the slide closes but the hammer stays cocked. You pull the trigger again and the hammer falls. Then you put in a new magazine.”
Tamaru went through the sequence of motions with practiced speed. Then he repeated the same sequence slowly, demonstrating each separate operation. Aomame watched intently.
“Now you try it.”
Aomame carefully extracted the magazine, pulled the slide back, emptied the chamber, lowered the hammer, and reinserted the magazine.
“That’s fine,” Tamaru said. Then he took the gun from Aomame, pulled out the magazine, carefully loaded it with seven bullets, and shoved it back into the gun with a loud click. Pulling back the slide, he sent a bullet into the chamber. Then he pushed down a lever on the left side of the gun to set the safety.
“Now do the same thing you did before. Only, this time it’s loaded with real bullets. There’s one in the chamber, too. The safety is on, but you still shouldn’t point the muzzle of the gun toward anyone,” Tamaru said.
Taking the loaded gun, Aomame found it noticeably heavier than before. Now it had the unmistakable feel of death. This was a precision tool designed to kill people. She could feel her armpits sweating.
Checking once more to make sure the safety was on, she opened the catch, pulled out the magazine, and set it on the table. Pulling back the slide, she ejected the bullet from the chamber. It fell on the wooden floor with a dry
thump. She pulled the trigger to close the slide, and pulled the trigger one more time, lowering the hammer. Then, with a trembling hand, she picked up the bullet from where it lay by her feet. Her throat was dry, and each breath she took was accompanied by a painful burning sensation.
“Not bad for your first time,” Tamaru said, pressing the fallen 9mm bullet back into the magazine. “But you need a lot more practice. Your hands are shaking. You should practice the movements for ejecting and reinserting the magazine several times a day until your hands learn the feel of the gun. You should be able to do it as quickly and automatically as I did. In the dark. In your case, you shouldn’t have to change magazines in mid-use, but the movements themselves are the most basic of the basic for people who handle pistols. You have to memorize them.”
“Don’t I need to practice firing?”
“Well, it’s not as if you’re going to shoot somebody with this. You’re just going to shoot yourself, right?”
Aomame nodded.
“In that case, you don’t have to practice firing. You just have to learn to load it, release the safety, and get the feel of the trigger. And anyway, where were you planning to practice firing it?”
Aomame shook her head. She had no idea.
“Also, how were you planning to shoot yourself? Here, give it a try.”
Tamaru inserted the loaded magazine, checked to make sure the safety was on, and handed the gun to Aomame. “The safety is on,” he said.
Aomame pressed the muzzle against her temple. She felt the chill of the steel. Looking at her, Tamaru slowly shook his head several times.
“Trust me, you don’t want to aim at your temple. It’s a lot harder than you think to shoot yourself in the brain that way. People’s hands usually shake, and it throws their aim off. You end up grazing your skull, but not killing yourself. You certainly don’t want that to happen.”
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