A Clean Kill in Tokyo

with the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, the political coalition that has been running Japan almost without a break since the war. His current position was Vice Minister of Land and Infrastructure at the
Kokudokotsusho,
the successor to the old Construction Ministry and Transport Ministry, where obviously he had done something to seriously offend someone because serious offense is the only reason I ever get a call from a client.
    I heard Harry’s voice in my ear: “He’s going into the Higashimura fruit store. I’ll set up ahead.” We were each sporting a Danish-made, microprocessor-controlled receiver small enough to nestle in the ear canal, where you’d need a flashlight to find it. A voice transmitter about the same size goes under the jacket lapel. The transmissions are burst, which makes them hard to pick up if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, and they’re scrambled in case you do. The equipment freed us from having to maintain constant visual contact, and allowed us to keep moving for a while if the target stopped or changed direction. So even though I was too far back to see it, I knew where Kawamura had exited, and I could continue walking for some time before needing to stop to keep my position behind him. Solo surveillance is difficult, and I was glad I had Harry with me.
    About twenty meters from the Higashimura, I turned into a drugstore, one of the dozens of open-façade structures that line Dogenzaka, catering to the Japanese obsession with health nostrums and germ fighting. Shibuya is home to many different
buzoku,
or tribes, and members of several were represented here this morning, united by a common need for one of the popular bottled energy tonics in which the drugstores specialize—tonics claiming to be bolstered with ginseng and other exotic ingredients but delivering instead with a more prosaic jolt of ordinary caffeine. Waiting in front of the register were a few gray-suited
sarariiman
—”salary man” corporate rank and file—their faces set, cheap briefcases dangling from tired hands, fortifying themselves for another interchangeable day in the maw of the corporate machine. Behind them, two empty-faced teenage girls, their hair reduced to steel wool brittleness by the dyes they used to turn it orange, noses pierced with oversized rings, their costumes meant to proclaim rejection of the traditional route chosen by the
sarariiman
in front of them but offering no understanding of what they had chosen instead; a gray-haired retiree, his skin sagging but his face oddly bright, probably in Shibuya to avail himself of one of the area’s well-known sexual services, which he would pay for out of a pension account he kept hidden from his wife, not realizing she knew what he was up to and simply didn’t care.
    I wanted to give Kawamura about three minutes to get his fruit before I came out, so I examined a selection of bandages affording a view of the street. The way he had ducked into the store looked like a move calculated to flush surveillance, and I didn’t like it. If we hadn’t been hooked up the way we were, Harry would have had to stop abruptly to maintain his position behind the target. He might have had to do something ridiculous—drop to tie his shoe, stop to read a street sign—and Kawamura, probably peering out from the store’s entrance, could have made him. Instead, I knew Harry would continue past the fruit store; he would stop about twenty meters ahead, give me his location, and fall in behind when I told him the parade was moving again.
    The fruit store was a good spot to turn off, all right—too good for someone who knew the route to have chosen it by accident. But Harry and I weren’t going to be flushed out by beginner moves from some government antiterrorist primer. I’ve had that training. It’s the beginning of skill, not the end of it.
    I left the drugstore and continued down Dogenzaka, more slowly than before because I had to give Kawamura time to exit the store. Shorthand thoughts shot through my mind: Are there enough people between us to obscure his vision if he turns when he comes out? What shops am I passing if I need to duck off suddenly? Is anyone looking up the street at the people heading toward the station, maybe helping Kawamura spot surveillance? If I had already drawn any countersurveillance attention they might notice me now, because before I was hurrying to keep up with the target and now I was taking my time, and