by Barry Eisler
I went down the stairs quietly but fast. Stuck my head out the exit door at the bottom, looked both ways. All clear. I shuffled down an alley connecting Hibiya-dori and Chuo-dori and cut across the park. The sun felt good on my face.
PART THREE
Now . . . they resolved to go back to their own land; because the years have a kind of emptiness when we spend too many of them on a foreign shore. But . . . if we do return, we find that the native air has lost its invigorating quality, and that life has shifted its reality to the spot where we have deemed ourselves only temporary residents.
Thus, between two countries, we have none at all . . .
— NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE,
The Marble Faun
19
“YOU ARE A maniac with a death wish, and I’m never working with you again,” Harry told me when I got to his apartment.
“I’m never working with me again, either,” I said. “Have you been getting anything from the transmitter?”
“Yes, everything that went on while you were there and a short meeting that just ended. It’s stored on the hard drive.”
“They say anything about the guy I ran into on my way out?”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a little encounter with one of Yamaoto’s men just after I put the transmitter in place. They must have figured it had happened earlier, or you would have heard them say something.”
“Oh, that. Yes, they thought it happened when you busted out of interrogation. They didn’t know you’d been back. You know, the guy is dead.”
“Yeah, he didn’t look too good when I left him.”
He was watching me closely, but I couldn’t read his eyes. “That was fast. You can do something like that, that fast, with just your hands?”
I looked at him, deadpan. “No, I needed my feet, too. Where’s Midori?”
“She went out to get an electronic piano keyboard. We’re going to try playing what’s on the disk for the computer — it’s the only way to discern the patterns in the lattice.”
I frowned. “She shouldn’t be going out if we can avoid it.”
“We couldn’t avoid it. Someone had to monitor the laser and infrared and save your ass before, and she isn’t familiar with the equipment. That didn’t leave a lot of alternatives.”
“I see what you mean.”
“She knows to be careful. She’s wearing light disguise. I don’t think there’s going to be a problem.”
“Okay. Let’s listen to what you got from the transmitter.”
“Just a second — tell me you didn’t leave the van.”
“What do you think, I went back for it? I’m crazy, but not that crazy.”
He looked like a kid who’d been told that his dog just died. “Do you have any idea how much that equipment cost?”
I suppressed a smile and patted him on the shoulder. “You know I’m good for it,” I said, which was true. I sat down in front of a computer monitor and picked up a pair of headphones. “Play it,” I said.
A few mouse clicks later I was listening to Yamaoto excoriating his men in Japanese. They must have called him with the bad news when I got away. “One man! One unarmed man! And you let him get away! Useless, incompetent idiots!”
I couldn’t tell who or how many he was talking to because they were suffering his tirade in silence. There was a long pause, during which I assumed he was collecting himself, and afterward he said, “It doesn’t matter. He may not know where the disk is, and even if he does I’m not confident that you would have been able to extract the information from him. He’s obviously tougher than any of you.”
After another long pause, someone spoke up: “What would you have us do, toushu?”
“What indeed,” Yamaoto said, his voice slightly hoarse from shouting. “Focus on the girl. She is still our most promising lead.”
“But she’s underground now,” the voice said.
“Yes, but she’s unaccustomed to such a life,” Yamaoto answered. “She went into hiding suddenly, presumably having left much of the ordinary business of her life suspended. We can count on her to return to that business presently. Put men in all the vital spots of her life — where she lives, where she works, her known acquaintances, her family. Work with Holtzer on this as necessary. He has the technical means.”
Holtzer? Work with him?
“And the man?”
There was a long pause, then Yamaoto said, “The man is a different story. He lives in shadows like a fish in water. Unless we are extraordinarily lucky, I expect you have lost him.”
I could imagine heads bowed collectively in shame in the Japanese fashion. After a while one of the men spoke up: “We may spot him with the girl.”
“Yes, that’s possible. He’s obviously protecting her. We know he saved her from Ishikura’s men outside her apartment. And his reaction to my questions about her whereabouts was defensive. He may have feelings for her.” I heard him chuckle. “A strange basis for a romance.”
Ishikura? I thought.
“In any event, Rain’s loss is not fatal,” Yamaoto continued. “The girl poses much more of a danger: she is the one Ishikura Tatsuhiko will be looking for, and he has as good a chance of finding her as we do — perhaps better, judging from his speed in preempting us at her apartment. And if he finds the disk, Ishikura will know what to do with it.”
Tatsu? Tatsu is looking for the damn disk, too? Those were his men at her apartment?
“No more chances,” Yamaoto went on. “No more loose ends. When the girl resurfaces, eliminate her immediately.”
“Hai,” several voices replied in chorus.
“Unfortunately, in the absence of the disk’s return or certification of its destruction, eliminating the girl will no longer provide us with complete security. It’s time to remove Ishikura Tatsuhiko from the equation, as well.”
“But, toushu,” one of the voices said, “Ishikura is a Keisatsucho department head. Not an easy man to eliminate without causing collateral problems. Moreover . . .”
“Yes, moreover, Ishikura’s death will make him a martyr in certain circles by providing elegant supporting evidence for all his conspiracy theories. But we have no choice. Better to have evidence of such theories than what’s on the disk, which is proof itself. Do your utmost to make Ishikura’s demise seem natural. Ironic, that at the moment we need him most, the man supremely capable of such art is unavailable to us. Well, take what inspiration you can from him. Dismissed.”
That was it. I removed the headphones and looked at Harry. “It’s still transmitting?”
“Until the battery runs out — about three weeks. I’ll keep monitoring it.”
I nodded, realizing that Harry was almost certainly going to hear things from that room that would lead back to me. Hell, Yamaoto’s comments were already damning if you were smart and had context: the reference to the “strange basis” of my attachment to Midori, and to the irony of having lost the services of the man “supremely capable” of effecting death by natural causes.
“I don’t think Midori should hear what’s on that tape,” I said. “She knows enough. I don’t want to . . . compromise her further.”
Harry bowed his head and said, “I completely understand.”
All at once, I knew that he knew.
“It’s good that I can trust you,” I said. “Thank you.”
He shook his head. “Kochira koso,” he said. The same here.
The buzzer rang. Harry pressed the intercom button, and Midori said, “It’s me.”
Harry hit the entrance buzzer, and we took up our positions, this time with me at the door and Harry at the window. A minute later I saw Midori walking down the hallway with a rectangular cardboard box in her arms. Her face broke into a smile when she saw me, and she covered the distance quickly, stepped inside the genkan, and gave me a quick hug.
“Every time I see you, you look worse,” she told me, stepping back after a moment and setting the box on the floor. It was tr
ue: my face was still smudged with dirt from my tumble on the subway tracks, and I knew I looked exhausted.
“I feel worse, too,” I said, but smiling to let her know she made me feel good.
“What happened?”
“I’ll give you the details in a little while. First, Harry tells me you’re going to give us a piano recital.”
“That’s right,” she said, reaching down and stripping tape off the box. She popped open the end and slid out an electronic keyboard. “Will this work?” she said, holding it up to Harry.
Harry took it and examined the jack. “I think I’ve got an adapter here somewhere. Hang on.” He walked over to the desk, pulled open a drawer filled with electronic components, and tried several units before finding one that satisfied him. He set the keyboard down on the desk, plugged it into the computer, and brought the scanned image of the notes up onto the monitor.
“The problem is that I can’t play music and Midori can’t run the computer. I think the shortcut will be to get the computer to apply the patterns of sounds to the representation of notes on the page. Once it’s got enough data to work with, the computer will interpret the musical notes as coordinates in the lattice, then use fractal analysis until it can discern the most basic way the pattern repeats itself. Then it will apply the pattern to standard Japanese through a code-breaking algorithm I’ve set up, and we’ll be in.”
“Right,” I said. “That’s just what I was thinking.”
Harry gave me his trademark “you-are-a-complete-knuckle-dragger” look, then said, “Midori, try playing the score on the monitor and let’s see what the computer can do with the data.”
Midori sat down at the desk and lifted her fingers over the keyboard. “Wait,” Harry said. “You’ve got to play it perfectly. If you add or delete a note, or play one out of order, you’ll create a new pattern, and the computer will get confused. You have to play exactly what appears on the screen. Can you do that?”
“I could if this were an ordinary song. But this composition is unusual. I’ll need to run through it a few times first. Can you disconnect me from the computer?”
“Sure.” He dragged and clicked the mouse. “Go ahead. Tell me when you’re ready.”
Midori looked at the screen for a few moments, her head straight and motionless, her fingers rippling ever so slightly in the air, reflecting the sounds she could hear in her mind. Then she brought her hands down gently to the keys, and for the first time we heard the eerie melody of the information that had cost Kawamura his life.
I listened uncomfortably while Midori played. After a few minutes, she said to Harry, “Okay, I’m ready. Plug me in.”
Harry worked the mouse. “You’re in. Let it hear you.”
Again, Midori’s fingers floated over the keys, and the room was filled with the strange requiem. When she reached the end of the score, she stopped and looked at Harry, her eyebrows raised in a question.
“It’s got the data,” he said. “Let’s see what it can do with it.”
We watched the screen, waiting for the results, none of us speaking.
After a half minute or so, a strange, disembodied series of notes emanated from the computer speakers, shadows of what I had heard Midori play a moment earlier.
“It’s factoring the sounds,” Harry said. “It’s trying to find the most basic pattern.”
We waited silently for several minutes. Finally Harry said, “I don’t see any progress. I might not have the computing power here.”
“Where can you get it?” Midori asked.
Harry shrugged. “I can try hacking into Livermore to gain access to their supercomputer. Their security has been getting better, though — it could take some time.”
“Would a supercomputer do the trick?” I asked.
“It might,” he said. “Actually, any reasonable amount of processing power is enough. It’s a question of time, though — the more processing power, the more possibilities the computer can try in a shorter time.”
“So a supercomputer would speed things up,” Midori said, “but we don’t know by how much.”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
There was a moment of frustrated quiet. Then Harry said, “Let’s think for a moment. How much do we even need to decrypt this?”
I knew where he was going: the same tempting thought I had at Conviction headquarters when Yamaoto was asking for the disk.
“What do you mean?” Midori asked.
“Well, what are our objectives here? The disk is like dynamite; we just want to render it safe. The owners know that it can’t be copied or electronically transmitted. For starters, we could render it safe by just giving it back to them.”
“No!” Midori said, standing up from in front of the monitor and facing Harry. “My father risked his life for what’s on that disk. It’s going where he wanted it to go!”
Harry held up his hands in an “I-surrender” gesture. “Okay, okay, I’m just trying to think outside the box. Just trying to be helpful.”
“It’s a logical idea, Harry,” I said, “but Midori’s right. Not only because her father risked his life to acquire the disk. We know now that there are multiple parties seeking its return — not just Yamaoto, but also the Agency, the Keisatsucho. Maybe more. Even if we were to give it back to one of them, it wouldn’t solve our problems with the others.”
“I see your point,” Harry conceded.
“But I like your dynamite analogy. How do you render dynamite safe?”
“You detonate it somewhere safe,” Midori said, still looking at Harry.
“Exactly,” I said.
“Bulfinch,” Midori said. “Bulfinch publishes it, and that’s what makes it safe. And it’s what my father wanted.”
“Do we give it to him without even knowing for sure what’s on it?” Harry asked.
“We know well enough,” I said. “Based on what Bulfinch told us, corroborated by Holtzer. I don’t see an alternative.”
He frowned. “We don’t even know if he has the resources to decrypt it.”
I suppressed a smile at the slight hint of resentment I detected: someone was going to take away his toy, maybe solve the technopuzzle without him.
“We can assume that Forbes can access the right resources. We know how much they want what’s on that disk.”
“I’d still like a better chance at decrypting it first.”
“So would I. But we don’t know how long that would take. In the meantime we’ve got forces arrayed against us and we’re not going to be able to go on eluding them for much longer. The sooner Bulfinch publishes the damn thing, the sooner we can breathe easy again.”
Midori, not taking any chances, said, “I’ll call him.”
20
I HAD TOLD Bulfinch to meet me in Akasaka Mitsuke, one of the city’s entertainment districts, second only to Ginza in its profusion of hostess bars. The area is intersected by a myriad of alleyways, some so narrow they can only be traversed sideways, all of which offer multiple means of access and escape.
It was raining and cold as I finished an SDR and exited Akasaka Mitsuke subway station in front of the Belle Vie department store. Across the street, bizarrely pink amidst the gray rain and sky, was the battleship bulk of the Akasaka Tokyu Hotel. I paused to open the black umbrella I was carrying, then turned right onto Sotobori-dori. After a right turn into an alley by the local Citibank, I emerged onto the red crenellated brick of the Esplanade Akasaka-dori.
I was over an hour early and decided to grab a quick lunch at the Tenkaichi ramen restaurant on the Esplanade. Tenkaichi, “First Under Heaven,” is a chain, but the one on the Esplanade has character. The proprietors accept foreign currency, and the notes and coins of dozens of countries are taped to the establishment’s brown wooden walls. They also play a continuous stream of jazz compilations, occasionally interspersed by some soft American pop. And the cushioned stools, some discreetly set off in corners, offer a good view of the street in front of the restaurant.<
br />
I ordered the chukadon — Chinese vegetables over rice — and ate while I watched the street through the window. Two sarariman, taking a late lunch break, also supped alone and in silence.
I had told Bulfinch that, at 2:00, he should start circling the block counterclockwise at 19-3 Akasaka Mitsuke san-chome. There were more than a dozen alleys accessing that particular block, each with multiple tributaries, so he wouldn’t know where I’d be waiting until I made my presence known. It didn’t matter if he came early. He’d just have to keep circling the block in the rain. He didn’t know where I’d be.
I finished at 1:50, paid the check, and left. Keeping the canopy of the umbrella low over my head, I crossed the Esplanade to Misuji-dori, then cut into an alley opposite the Buon Appetito restaurant on the 19-3 block and waited under the overhang of some rusting corrugated roofing. Because of the hour and the weather, the area was quiet. I waited and watched sad drops of water falling in a slow rhythm from the rusted roof onto the tops of dilapidated plastic refuse containers beneath.
After about ten minutes I heard footsteps on the wet brick behind me, and a moment later Bulfinch appeared. He was wearing an olive trench coat and hunkering down under a large black umbrella. From where I was standing he couldn’t see me, and I waited until he had passed before speaking.
“Bulfinch. Over here,” I said quietly.
“Shit!” he said, turning to face me. “Don’t do that. You scared me.”
“You’re alone?”
“Of course. You brought the disk?”
I stepped out from under the roofing and observed the alley in both directions. All clear. “It’s nearby. Tell me what you plan to do with it.”
“You know what I plan to do. I’m a reporter. I’m going to write a series of stories with whatever’s on there as corroboration.”
“How long will that take?”
“How long? Hell, the stories are already written. All I need is the proof.”
I considered. “Let me tell you a few things about the disk,” I said, and explained about the encryption.
