A Clean Kill in Tokyo

resigning from the CIA.”
    “Just resigning? He’s not being charged with anything? He’s been a mole for Yamaoto, feeding false intel to the U.S. government. Doesn’t the disk implicate him?”
    He bowed his head and sighed. “The information on the disk is not the kind of evidence that will be used in court. And there is a desire on both sides to avoid a scandal.”
    “And Yamaoto?” I asked.
    “The matter of Yamaoto Toshi is… complicated,” he said.
    “‘Complicated’ doesn’t sound good.”
    “Yamaoto is a powerful enemy. To be fought obliquely, with stealth, over time.”
    “I don’t understand. What about the disk? I thought you said it was the key to his power?”
    “It is.”
    It hit me then. “You’re not going to publish it.”
    “No.”
    I was silent for a long moment as the implications set in. “Then Yamaoto still thinks it’s out there,” I said. “And you’ve signed Midori’s death warrant.”
    “Yamaoto has been given to understand that the disk was destroyed by corrupt elements of the
Keisatsucho.
His interest in Kawamura Midori is thus substantially reduced. She will be safe for now in the United States, where Yamaoto’s power does not extend.”
    “What? You can’t just exile her to America, Tatsu. She has a life here.”
    “She has already left.”
    I couldn’t take it all in.
    “You may be tempted to contact her,” he continued. “I would advise against this. She believes you are dead.”
    “Why would she believe that?”
    “Because I told her.”
    “Tatsu,” I said, my voice dangerously flat, “explain yourself.”
    His voice stayed matter-of-fact. “Although I knew you were concerned for her, I didn’t know, when I told her of your death, what had happened between you,” he said. “From her reaction, I realized.”
    He paused for a long moment, then looked at me squarely, his eyes resigned. “I deeply regret the pain you feel now. However, I’m more convinced even than before that I did the right thing in telling her. Your situation was impossible. It’s much better that she know nothing of your involvement in her father’s death. Think of what such knowledge would have done to her after what had happened between you.”
    I wasn’t even surprised that Tatsu had put together all the pieces. “She didn’t have to know,” I heard myself say.
    “At some level, I believe she already did. Your presence would eventually have confirmed her suspicions. Instead, she is left with memories of the hero’s death you died in completing her father’s last wishes.”
    I realized, but couldn’t quite grasp, that Midori had already been made part of my past. It was like a magic trick. Now you see it, now you don’t. Now it’s real, now it’s just a memory.
    “If I may say so,” he said, “her affair with you was brief. There’s no reason to expect her grief over your loss will be prolonged.”
    “Thanks, Tatsu,” I managed to say. “That’s a comfort.”
    He bowed his head. It would be unseemly for him to give voice to his conflicted feelings, and anyway he would still do what he had to.
Giri
and
ninjo.
Duty and human feeling. In Japan, the first is always primary.
    “I still don’t understand,” I said after a minute. “I thought you wanted to publish what’s on the disk. It would vindicate all your theories about conspiracies and corruption.”
    “Ending the conspiracies and corruption is more important than vindicating my theories about them.”
    “Aren’t they one and the same? Bulfinch said if the contents of the disk were public, the Japanese media would have no choice but to follow up, that Yamaoto’s power would be extinguished.”
    He nodded slowly. “There is some truth to that. But publishing the disk is like launching a nuclear missile. You only get to do it once, and it results in complete destruction.”
    “So? Launch the missile. Destroy the corruption.”
    He sighed, his sympathy for the shock I had just experienced perhaps ameliorating the impatience he usually felt in having to spell everything out for me. “In Japan, the corruption is the society. The rust has penetrated so deep that the superstructure is made of it. You cannot simply rip it all out without precipitating a collapse of the society that rests on it.”
    “Bullshit,” I said. “If it’s that corrupt, let it go.”
    “Rain-san,” he said, a tiny note of impatience in his voice, “have you considered what would rise from the ashes?”
    “What