by Barry Eisler
“What were you going to do with all that?”
“The fuck do you think we were going to do with it? With that kind of information, the U.S. government would own the LDP. We’d have every Japanese politician in our pocket. Think we’d ever get any grief again about military bases on Okinawa or at Atsugi? Think we’d have any trouble exporting as much rice or as many semiconductors or cars as we wanted? The LDP is the power here, and we would have been the power behind the power. Japan would have been Uncle Sam’s favorite prison fuckboy forever.”
“I gather from your tone Uncle Sam has been disappointed in love.”
His smile was more like a sneer. “Not disappointed. Just postponed. We’ll still get what we want.”
“What was your connection with Benny?”
“Poor Benny. He was a great source on LDP slime. He knew the players, but he didn’t have the access, you know? The asset had the access.”
“But you sent him to my apartment.”
“Yeah, we sent him. Alone, to question you.”
“How did you find out what happened to him?”
“Come on, Rain, the guy’s neck was snapped clean in half right outside your apartment. Who else would have done it, one of your neighbors on a pension? Besides, we had him wired for sound. SOP for this kind of thing. So we heard everything, heard him blaming me, the little prick.”
“And the other guy?”
“We don’t know anything about him, other than he turned up dead a hundred meters from where the Tokyo police found Benny’s body.”
“Benny told me he was Boeicho Boeikyoku. That you handled the liaison.”
“He was right that I handle the Boeikyoku liaison, but he was full of shit that I knew his friend. Anyway, you can bet we did some checking, and Benny’s pal wasn’t with Japanese Intelligence. When Benny took him to your apartment, he was on a private mission, getting paid by someone else. You know you can’t trust these moles, Rain. You remember the problems we had with our ARVN counterparts in Vietnam.”
I looked up at the rearview and saw the driver looking at us, his face suspicious. The chances he could follow our conversation in English were nil, but I could see he sensed something was amiss, that it was unnerving him.
“They take money from you, they’ll take it from anyone,” he went on. “I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to miss Benny. You get paid by both sides, someone finds out, hey, you get what you had coming anyway.”
Or at least you should. “Right,” I said.
“But let me finish the part about the asset. Three weeks ago he’s on his way to deliver the information, downloaded to a disk. He’s actually carrying the fucking crown jewels, and—can you believe this?—he has a heart attack on the Yamanote and dies. We send people to the hospital, but the disk is gone.”
“How can you be so sure he was carrying the disk when he died?”
“Oh we’re sure, Rain. We’ve got our ways, you know that. Sources and methods, though, nothing I can talk about. But the missing disk, that’s not even the best part. You want to hear the best part?”
“I can’t wait.”
“Okay, then,” he said, leaning closer to me and smiling his grotesque smile again. “The best part is that it wasn’t really a heart attack. Someone iced this fucker, someone who knew how to make it look like natural causes.”
“I don’t know, Holtzer. It sounds pretty far-fetched.”
“It does, doesn’t it? Especially because there are so few people in the whole world, let alone Japan, who could pull something like that off. Hell, the only one I know of is you.”
“This is what you wanted to meet me for?” I said. “To suggest I was mixed up in this kind of bullshit?”
“Come on, Rain. Enough fucking around. I know exactly what you’re mixed up in.”
“I’m not following you.”
“No? I’ve got news for you, then. Half the jobs you’ve done over the last ten years, you’ve done for us.”
What the hell?
He leaned closer and whispered the names of various prominent politicians, bankers, and bureaucrats who had met untimely but natural ends. They were all my work.
“You can read those names in the paper,” I said, but I knew he had more.
He told me the particulars of the secure site system I had been using with Benny, the numbers of the relevant Swiss accounts.
Goddamn, I thought, feeling sick. You’ve been nothing but a tool for these people. It’s never stopped. Goddamn.
“I know this is a shock for you, Rain,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “All these years you’ve thought you’ve been working freelance and in fact the Agency has been paying the bills. But look on the bright side, okay? You’re great at what you do! Christ, you’re a fucking magician, making these people disappear without a trace, without a sign that there was any foul play. I wish I knew how you do it. I really do.”
I looked at him, my eyes expressionless. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to show you sometime.”
“Dream on, pal. Now look, we had access to the autopsy report. Kawamura had a pacemaker that somehow managed to shut itself off. The coroner attributed it to a defect. But you know what? We did a little research, and found out that a defect like that is just about impossible. Someone shut that pacemaker off, Rain. Your kind of job exactly. I want to know who hired you.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“What doesn’t?”
“Why go to such lengths just to retrieve the disk?”
His eyes narrowed. “You tell me.”
“I can’t. I can only tell you if I had wanted that disk, I could have found a lot of easier ways to take it.”
“Maybe it wasn’t up to you,” he said. “Maybe whoever hired you on this one told you to retrieve it. I know you’re not in the habit of asking a lot of questions about these assignments.”
“And have I ever been in the habit of being an errand boy on these jobs? Retrieving requested items?”
He crossed his arms and looked at me. “Not that I know of.”
“Then it sounds like you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“You did him, Rain. You were the last one with him. You have to understand, it doesn’t look good.”
“My reputation will have to suffer.”
He looked at me for a moment, massaging his chin. “You know the Agency is the least of your worries among the people who are trying to get the disk back.”
“What people?”
“Who do you think? The people who it implicates. The politicians, the yakuza, the muscle behind the whole Japanese power structure.”
I considered for a moment, then said, “How did you find out about me? About me in Japan?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, that would fall under sources and methods again, nothing I can discuss here. But I’ll tell you what.” He leaned forward again. “Come on in, and we can talk about anything you want.”
It was such a non sequitur I thought I had heard wrong. “Did you say ‘Come on in?’”
“Yes, I did. If you look at your situation, you’ll see you need our help.”
“I didn’t know you were such a humanitarian, Holtzer.”
“Cut the shit, Rain. We’re not doing this for humanity. We want your cooperation. Either you’ve got that disk, or because you were hunting Kawamura, you’ve got information that might help us find it. We’ll help you in exchange. It’s as simple as that.”
But I knew these people, and I knew Holtzer. Nothing was ever simple with them—and the simpler it looked, the harder they were about to nail you.
“I’m in an uncomfortable spot,” I said. “No sense denying it. Maybe I’ve got to trust someone. But it’s not going to be you.”
“Look, if this is about the war, you’re being ridiculous. It was a long time ago. This is another time, another place.”
“But the people are the same.”
He waved his hand as though he was trying to dispel an offensive odor. “I
t doesn’t matter what you think of me, Rain. Because this isn’t about us. The situation is what matters, and the situation is this: The police want you. The LDP wants you. The yakuza wants you. And they’re going to find you because your cover is fucking blown. Now let us help you.”
What to do. Take him out right here? That would lead to retribution, which, given my current circumstances, was something I would have preferred to avoid.
The car behind us made a right. I glanced back and saw the car that was following it, a black sedan with three or four Japanese in it, slow down instead of taking up the space that had developed. Not an effective strategy for driving in Tokyo traffic.
I waited until we were almost at the next light, then told the driver to make a left. He just had time to brake and make the turn. The sedan changed lanes with us.
I told the driver I was mistaken, that he should get back on Meiji-dori. He looked back at me, clearly annoyed, wondering what the hell this was all about.
The sedan stayed with us as we made the turns.
Oh, shit.
“You bring some people with you, Holtzer? I thought I told you to come alone.”
“They’re here to bring you inside. For your protection.”
“Fine, they can follow us back to the embassy,” I said, suddenly scared and trying to think of a way out.
“I’m not going to have some cab drive the two of us into the embassy compound together. It’s enough of a breach of security I’ve met with you at all. They’ll bring you in. It’s safer.”
How could they have followed him? Even if he were wearing a transmitter in a body cavity, they couldn’t have pinpointed the location in this traffic.
Then I realized. They had played me beautifully. They knew when “Lincoln” called that I was going to demand an immediate meeting. They didn’t know where, but they had people mobile and ready to move the second they found out the place. They had twenty minutes to get to Shinjuku, and they could stay close enough to react to what they heard through the transmitter without my seeing them. Holtzer must have given them the name of the cab company, the car’s description, the license-plate number, and updated them about its progress until I got in. By then they were already in position. All while I was congratulating myself for thinking so well on my feet and taking control of the situation, while I was relaxing after getting rid of the transmitter.
I hoped I would live to enjoy the lesson. “Who are they?” I asked.
“People we can trust. Working with the embassy.”
The light at the Kanda River overpass turned red. The cab started to slow down.
I snapped my head right, then left, searching for an avenue of escape.
The sedan crept closer, stopping a car length away.
Holtzer looked at me, trying to gauge what I was going to do. For a split instant our eyes locked. Then he lunged at me.
“It’s for your own good!” he yelled, trying to get his arms around my waist. I saw the back doors of the sedan open, a pair of burly Japanese in sunglasses stepping out on either side.
I tried to push Holtzer away, but his hands were locked behind my back. The driver turned around and started yelling something. I didn’t hear what.
The two Japanese had closed their doors and were carefully approaching the taxi. Shit.
I wrapped my right arm around Holtzer’s neck, holding his head in place against my chest, and slipped my left between my body and his neck, the ridge of my hand searching for his carotid. “Aum da! Aum Shinrikyo da!” I yelled at the driver. “Sarin o motte iru!” Aum was the cult that gassed the Tokyo subway in 1995, and memories of the sarin gas attack could still cause panic.
Holtzer yelled something against my chest. I leaned forward, using my torso and legs like a walnut cracker. I felt him go limp.
“Ei? Nan da tte?” the driver asked, his eyes wide. What do you mean?
One of the Japanese tapped on the passenger-side window. “Aitsu! Aum da! Sarin da! Boku no tomodachi—ishiki ga nai! Ike! Kuruma o dase!” Those men! They’re Aum—they have sarin! My friend is unconscious! Drive! Drive! Getting the right note of terror in my voice wasn’t too much of a reach.
He might have thought it was bullshit or that I was crazy, but sarin wasn’t worth the chance. He snapped the car into gear and hauled the steering wheel to the right, doing a burning-rubber U-turn on Meiji-dori and cutting off oncoming traffic in the process. I saw the Japanese hurrying back to their car.
“Isoide! Isoide! Byoin ni tanomu!” Hurry! We need a hospital!
At the intersection of Meiji-dori and Waseda-dori, the driver ripped through a light that had just turned red, braking into a sliding lefthand turn in the direction of the National Medical Center. The g-force ripped Holtzer away from me. The flow of traffic on Waseda-dori closed in behind us a second later, and I knew the sedan would be stuck for a minute, maybe more.
Tozai Waseda Station was just ahead. Time for me to bail. I told the driver to pull over. Holtzer was slumped against the driver-side door, unconscious but breathing. I wanted to put the strangle back in—one less adversary to worry about. But there was no time.
The driver started to protest, saying we had to get my friend to a hospital, we needed to call the police, but I insisted again that he pull over. He stopped and I took out the other half of the ten-thousand-yen note I owed him, then threw in one more.
I grabbed the package I had bought for Midori, jumped out of the cab, and bolted down the steps to the subway. If I had to wait for a train I was going to use an alternate exit and stay on foot, but my timing was good—the Tozai line was just pulling in. I took it to Nihonbashi Station, switched to the Ginza line, and then changed at Shinbashi to the Yamanote. I did a careful SDR on the way, and by the time I surged through the station turnstiles at Shibuya, I knew I was safe for the moment. But they’d flushed me into the open, and the moment wouldn’t last.
CHAPTER 16
An hour later I got Harry’s page, and we met at the Doutor Coffee Shop per our previous arrangement. He was waiting for me when I got there.
“Tell me what you’ve got,” I said.
“Well, it’s strange.”
“Explain ‘strange.’”
“Well, the first thing is, this disk has some pretty advanced copy management protection built into it.”
“Can you break it?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Copy management is different than encryption. The disk can’t be copied, can’t be distributed electronically, can’t be sent over the Internet.”
“You mean you can make only one copy from the source?”
“One copy or many copies, I’m not sure, but the point is you can’t make copies of copies. No grandchildren in this family.”
“And there’s no way to send the contents of the disk over the Internet, upload to a secure site, anything like that?”
“No. If you try, the data will get randomized. You won’t be able to read it.”
“Well, that explains a few things,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like why they were messing with disks in the first place. Like why they’re so eager to get this one back. They know it hasn’t been copied or uploaded, so they know their potential damage is still limited to this one disk.”
“That’s right.”
“Now tell me this. Why would whoever controls the data permit even a single copy? Why not no copies? Wouldn’t that be more secure?”
“Probably more secure, but risky, too. If something happened to the master, all your records would be gone. You’d want some kind of backup.”
I considered. “What else is there?”
“Well, as you know, it’s encrypted.”
“Yes.”
“The encryption is strange.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Ever hear of a lattice reduction?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s a kind of code. The cryptographer encodes a message in a patter
n, a pattern like the flowers in a symmetrical wallpaper design. But wallpaper patterns are simple—only one image in two dimensions. A more complex code uses a pattern that repeats itself at various levels of detail, in multiple mathematical dimensions. To break the code, you have to find the most basic way the lattice repeats itself—the origin of the pattern, in a way.”
“So…”
“I did some work with lattice reductions at Fort Meade, but this one is strange.”
“Harry, if you say that one more time…”
“Sorry, sorry. It’s strange because the lattice seems to be a musical pattern, not a physical one.”
“I’m not following you.”
“There’s an overlay of what looks like musical notes—in fact, my optical drive recognized it as a music disk, not a data disk. The pattern is bizarre, but highly symmetrical.”
“Can you crack it?”
“I’ve been trying to, so far without luck. I’ve got to tell you, I’m a little out of my element on this one.”
“Out of your element? All those years with the NSA, what could be out of your element?”
He blushed. “It’s not the encryption. It’s the music. I need a musician to walk me through it.”
“A musician,” I said.
“Yeah, a musician. You know, someone who reads music, preferably someone who writes it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I could really use her help on this,” he said.
“Let me think about it,” I told him, uncomfortable.
“Okay.”
“What about the mobile phones? Anything there?”
He smiled. “I was hoping you would ask. Ever hear of the Shinnento?”
“Not sure,” I said, trying to place the name. “New Year something?”
“‘Shinnen’ like ‘faith’ or ‘conviction,’ not ‘New Year,’” he said, drawing the appropriate kanji in the air with a finger to distinguish one of the homonyms that pervade the language. “It’s a political party. The last call the kendoka made was to their headquarters in Shibakoen, and the number was speed-coded into both the phones’ memories.” He smiled, obviously relishing what he was about to say next. “And just in case that’s not enough to establish the connection, Conviction was paying the phone bill for the kendoka.”
