Rising Sun

“GM owns a third of Isuzu. Not a controlling interest. And yes, there are isolated instances. But overall, foreign investment in Japan has declined by half in the last ten years. One company after another finds the Japanese market just too tough. They get tired of the bullshit, the hassles, the collusion, the rigged markets, the dangō, the secret agreements to keep them out. They get tired of the government regulations. The run around. And eventually they give up. They just… give up. Most other countries have given up: Germans, Italians, French. Everybody’s getting tired of trying to do business in Japan. Because no matter what they tell you, Japan is closed. A few years ago, T. Boone Pickens bought one-fourth of the stock of a Japanese company, but he couldn’t get on the board of directors. Japan is closed.”

“So what are we supposed to do?”

“The same thing the Europeans are doing,” Co

On the rink, some teenage girls began to do warmups and a few tentative leaps. Now the schoolteacher was leading her charges along the corridor past us. As she went by, she said, “Is one of you Lieutenant Smith?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

One kid said, “Do you have a gun?”

The teacher said, “That woman asked me to tell you that what you’re looking for is in the men’s locker room.”

“It is?” I said.

The kid said, “Can I see it?”

The teacher said, “You know, the Oriental woman? I think she was Oriental.”

“Yes,” Co

“I want to see the gun.”

Another kid said, “Quiet, stupid. Don’t you know anything? They’re undercover.”

“I want to see the gun.”

Co

“Nothing like an inconspicuous exit,” Co

The men’s locker room was deserted. I started going through the green metal lockers, one after another, looking for the tapes. Co

He was in the rear by the showers. “You found the tapes?”

“No.”

He was holding open a door.

We went down a flight of concrete stairs to a landing. There were two doors. One opened onto a below-grade truck entrance. The other went into a dark hallway with wooden beams. “This way,” Co

We went down this hallway, crouched over. We were underneath the rink again. We passed throbbing stainless-steel machinery, and then came to a series of doors.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I said.

One of the doors was ajar. He pushed it open. The room lights were out, but I could see that we were in the lab. Off in a corner, I saw a faint monitor glow.

We walked toward it.

18

Theresa Asakuma leaned back from the table, pushed her glasses up on her forehead, and rubbed her beautiful eyes. “It’s okay as long as we don’t make much noise,” she said. “They had a guard outside the main door earlier. I don’t know if he’s still there.”

“A guard?”

“Yeah. They were serious about shutting down the lab. It was spectacular, like a drug bust. It really surprised the Americans.”

“And you?”

“I don’t have the same expectations about this country.”

Co

Theresa pointed to the main screen. “I’m not certain,” she said. “To be completely certain, I would have to run 3-D modeling sequences to match the dimensions of the room and keep track of all the light sources, and the shadows cast by all the sources. I haven’t done that, and I probably can’t with the equipment in this room. It would probably require an overnight run on a mini. Maybe I could get time next week from the astrophysics department. The way things are going, maybe not. But in the meantime, I have a strong feeling.”

“Which is?”

“The shadows don’t match.”

In the darkness, Co

I said, “Which shadows don’t match?”

She pointed to the screen. “As these people move around the floor, the shadows they cast don’t line up exactly. They’re in the wrong place, or the wrong shape. Often it’s subtle. But I think it is there.”

“And the fact that the shadows don’t match means…”

She shrugged. “I’d say the tapes have been altered, Lieutenant.”

There was a silence. “Altered how?”

“I’m not sure how much has been done. But it seems clear that there was another person in that room, at least part of the time.”

“Another person? You mean a third person?”

“Yes. Someone watching. And that third person has been systematically erased.”

“No shit,” I said.

It was making my head spin. I looked at Co

“I suspected something of the sort.”

“Why?”

“Well, early in the investigation it seemed likely that the tapes were going to be altered.”

“Why?” I said.

Co

I said, “No, I want to hear this. When did you first know the tapes were altered?”

“In the Nakamoto security room.”

“Why?”

“Because of the missing tape.”

“What missing tape?” I said. He had mentioned it before.

“Think back,” Co

“Yes…”

“And the tape recorders all had timers, showing an elapsed time of about two hours. Each recorder started about ten or fifteen seconds later than the previous one. Because that was the time interval it took him to change each tape.”

“Right…” I remembered all that.

“And I pointed out to him one tape recorder that didn’t fit the sequence. Its tape was only ru

“And the guard seemed to think it was.”

“Yes. That’s what he said. I was letting him off the hook. Actually, he knew perfectly well it was not broken.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. It was one of the few mistakes that the Japanese have made. But they only made it because they were stuck—they couldn’t get around it. They couldn’t beat their own technology.”

I leaned back against the wall. I looked apologetically at Theresa. She looked beautiful in the semidarkness of the monitors. “I’m sorry. I’m lost.”

“That’s because you are rejecting the obvious explanation, kōhai. Think back. If you saw a line of tape recorders, each one ru

“That someone had changed the tape in that one recorder at a later time.”

“Yes. And that’s exactly what happened.”

“One tape was switched later?”

“Yes.”

I frowned. “But why? All of the tapes were replaced at nine o’clock. So none of the replacements showed the murder, anyway.”

“Correct,” Co

“Then why switch one tape after that?”

“Good question. It’s puzzling. I couldn’t make sense of it for a long time. But now I know,” Co