A Clean Kill in Tokyo

he said, she would have figured out the truth eventually, or it would have found its own way of forcing itself into her consciousness.
    He was right, too, about my loss not being a long-term issue for her. She was young, and had a brilliant career just beginning to unfold. When you’ve known someone only briefly, even if intensely, death comes as a shock, but not a particularly long or deep one. After all, there was no time for the person in question to become woven tightly into the fabric of your life. It’s surprising, even a little disillusioning, how quickly you get over it, how quickly the memory of what you might have shared with someone comes to seem distant, improbable, like something that might have happened to someone you know but not to you yourself.
    The set lasted an hour. When it was done, I stood and eased out the back, exiting through the wooden doors, pausing for a moment under a moonless sky. I closed my eyes and inhaled the smells of Manhattan’s night air, at once strange and yet, connected to that long-ago life, still disturbingly familiar.
    “Excuse me,” a woman’s voice came from behind me.
    I turned, thinking
Midori.
But it was only the coat-check girl. “You left this behind,” she said, holding out the trilby. I had placed it on the seat next to me after the lights had gone down and had then forgotten it.
    I took the hat wordlessly and walked off into the night.
    Midori. There were moments with her when I would forget everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve become. But those moments would never have lasted. I am the product of the things I’ve done, and I knew I would always wake up to this conclusion, no matter how beguiling the reverie that preceded the awakening.
    What I needed to do was not deny what I was, but to find a way to channel it. Maybe, for the first time, into something worthwhile. Maybe something with Tatsu. I’d have to think about that.
    Midori. I still listen to her music. I hang on hard to the notes, trying to keep them from vanishing into the air, but they are elusive and ungraspable and each one dies in the dark around me like a tracer in a treeline.
    Sometimes I catch myself saying her name. I like its texture on my lips, something tenuous but still tangible to give substance to my memories. I say it slowly, several times in succession, like a chant or a prayer.
    Does she ever think of you?
I sometimes wonder.
    Probably not,
is the inevitable reply.
    It doesn’t matter. It feels good to know she’s out there. I’ll keep listening to her from the shadows. Like it was before. Like it’s always going to be.

AUTHOR’S NOTE
    W ith two exceptions, I have depicted the Tokyo in this book as accurately I could. Tokyoites familiar with Shibuya will know there is no Higashimura fruit store midway up Dogenzaka. The real fruit store is at the bottom of the street, closer to the station. And seekers after Bar Satoh in Omotesando, although they will come across a number of fine whisky bars in the area, will find Satoh-san’s establishment only in Miyakojima-ku, Osaka. It is the best whisky bar in Japan and worth the trip.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    T o my agent, Nat Sobel, and his wife, Judith, for believing in me all the way back to the first iteration. At times Nat knew John Rain better than I did (this could be a little unsettling), and Rain would never have emerged as the complex character he is without Nat’s insight and guidance.
    To Walter LaFeber of Cornell University, for being a great teacher and friend, and for writing
The Clash: A History of U.S. Japan Diplomatic Relations,
the definitive study of its subject, which provided some of the historical foundations for the birth of John Rain.
    To my instructors, formal and informal, and
randori
partners at the Kodokan in Tokyo, the beating heart of world judo, for imparting to me some of the skills that make their home in John Rain’s deadly toolbox.
    To John L. Plaster, for his book
SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam,
which provided vital background on Rain’s military experience. The backstory in the novel about a South Vietnamese mole is based on actual SOG experiences as described by Plaster. In the real world, the mole was never found.
    To Mark Baker, for his book
Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There.
Rain’s recounting of the massacre at Cu Lai is based on one of the firsthand accounts in Baker’s book.
    To Benjamin Fulford,
Forbes
Tokyo Bureau