Hard Rain

“I read about that. Didn’t the LDP try to suppress a forty-page report on what had happened?”

This time his smile was wry. “The Liberal Democratic Party officials involved in the attempted cover-up were punished, of course. They had their pay docked.”

“Now there’s a deterrent to future abuses,” I said, laughing. “Especially when you know they were greased with twice what got docked.”

He shrugged. “As a cop, I welcome Juki Net and the camera networks as a crime-fighting tool. As a citizen, I find it all appalling.”

“So why swear me to secrecy on this? Sounds like a few leaks would be just the thing.”

He cocked his head to the side, as though marveling at how my thinking could be so crude. “If such leaks were timed incorrectly,” he said, “they would be as useless as a powerful but misplaced explosive charge.”

He was telling me he was up to something. He was also telling me not to ask.

“So you used this network to find me,” I said.

“Yes. I kept the mug shots that were taken of you at Metropolitan Police Headquarters when you were detained after the incident outside of Yokosuka naval base. I had these photographs fed into the computer so that the network could look for you. I instructed the technicians to focus their initial efforts on Osaka. Still, because the system turns up so many false positives, the problem took a long time and significant human resources to solve. I have been looking for you for almost a year, Rain-san.”

I realized from what he was telling me that the relentless advance of technology was going to force me to return to the nomadic existence I had adopted between Vietnam and my return to Japan, when I had wandered the earth without an identity, drifting from one mercenary conflict to another. There was no pleasure in the thought. I had done my penance for Crazy Jake and didn’t wish to repeat the experience.

“The system is not perfect,” he went on. “There are numerous gaps in coverage, for example, and, as I mentioned, too many false positives. Still, over time, we were able to identify certain commonalities in your movements. A high incidence of sightings in Miyakojima, for example. From there, it was simple enough to check the records of the local ward office for new resident registrations, weed out false leads, and uncover your address. Eventually, we were able to track you sufficiently closely so that I could travel to Osaka and follow you here tonight.”

“Why didn’t you just come to my apartment?”

He smiled. “Where you live is always where you are most vulnerable because it represents a possible choke point for an ambush. And I would not wish to surprise a man like you where he felt most vulnerable. Safer, I judged, to approach you on neutral ground, where you might even see me coming, ne?”

I nodded, acknowledging his point. If you’re a likely target for a kidnapping or assassination attempt, or for any other kind of ambush, the bad guys can only get to you where they know you’re going to be. Meaning outside your home, most likely, or the place where you work. Or at some point in between where they can rely on you to show up-maybe the only bridge crossing between your home and office, something like that. These choke points are where you need to be the most sensitive to signs of danger.

“Well?” he asked, raising his eyebrows slightly. “Did you see me?”

I shrugged. “Yes.”

He smiled again. “I knew you would.”

“Or you could have called.”

“In which case, you might have disappeared again after hearing my voice.”

“That’s true.”

“All in all, I think this was the best approach.”

“The way you went about this,” I said, “a lot of people were involved. People in your organization, maybe people with the CIA.”

He might have said something to intimate that any such lack of security was my fault, for having failed to contact him as I had suggested I would. But that wouldn’t have been Tatsu’s style. He had his interests in this matter, as I had mine, and he wouldn’t have blamed me for disappearing any more than he expected me to blame him for tracking me down.

“There has been no mention of your name in any of this,” he told me. “Only a photograph. And the technicians tasked with checking for the matches the system spits out have no knowledge regarding the basis of my interest. To them, you are simply one of many criminals that the Metropolitan Police Force is tracking. And I have taken other steps to ensure security, such as coming alone tonight and informing no one of my movements.”

This was a dangerous thing for Tatsu to admit. If it were true, I could solve pretty much all my problems just by taking out this one man. Again, he was showing me that he trusted me, that I could trust him in return.

“You’re taking a lot of chances,” I said, looking at him.

“Always,” he said, returning my gaze.

There was a long silence. Then I said, “No women. No children. It has to be a man.”

“It is.”

“You can’t have involved anyone else in this. You work with me, it’s an exclusive.”

“Yes.”

“And the target has to be a principal. Taking him out can’t just be to send a message to someone. It has to accomplish something concrete.”

“It will.”

Having established my three rules, it was now time to apprise him of the consequences for breaking them.

“You know, Tatsu, outside of professional reasons-meaning combat or a contract-there’s only one thing that has ever moved me to kill.”

“Betrayal,” he said, to show me that he clearly understood.

“Yes.”

“Betrayal is not in my nature.”

I laughed, because this was the first time I had ever heard Tatsu say something naïve. “It’s in everyone’s nature,” I told him.

We had worked out a system by which we could communicate securely, including simple codes and access to a secure electronic bulletin board that I continued to maintain for sensitive communications. I had told him I would contact him afterward, but now I wondered whether that would really be necessary. Tatsu would learn of the yakuza’s accident from independent sources and know that I had held up my end. Besides, the less contact with Tatsu, the better. Sure, we had a history. Respect. Even affection. But it was hard to believe that the alignment of our interests would last, and, in the end, that alignment, or its lack, would be all that mattered. A sad thought, in certain respects. There aren’t many people in my life, and, now that things had turned out all right, I realized I had on some level enjoyed this latest encounter with my old friend and nemesis.

Sad also because it forced me to admit something I had been avoiding. I was going to have to leave Japan. I’d been preparing for such a contingency, but it was sobering to acknowledge that the time might be at hand. If Tatsu knew where to find me, and came to believe that I’d gotten back in the game in a way that was inhibiting his life’s work of fighting corruption in Japan, it would be too easy for him to have me picked up. Conversely, if I agreed to play by his rules, it would be too easy for him to drop in periodically and ask for a “favor.” Either way, he’d be ru

My pager buzzed. I checked it, saw a five-digit sequence that told me it was Harry, that he wanted me to call him.

I finished eating and motioned to the waiter that I was ready for the check. I looked around the restaurant one last time. The office party had broken up. The Americans remained, the white noise of their conversation warm and enthusiastic. The couple was still there, the young man’s posture steadfastly earnest, the girl continuing to parry with quiet laughter.

It felt good to be back in Tokyo. I didn’t want to leave.

I walked out of the restaurant, pausing to enjoy the feel of Nishi-Azabu’s cool evening air, my eyes reflexively sweeping the street. A few cars passed, but otherwise it was as quiet as the Aoyama cemetery, brooding and dark, silently beckoning, across from where I stood.