A Clean Kill in Tokyo

‘not very long at all. A month, maybe two. Longer if I choose to suffer from radiation and drugs, which I don’t wish to do. The strange thing is, when I heard this news it didn’t bother me, or even surprise me very much.’ Then his eyes filled up, which I had never seen before. He said, ‘What bothered me wasn’t losing my life, but knowing I had already lost my daughter.’”
    She stopped, and with a quick, economical movement, wiped the edge of one eye, then the other. “He told me about all the things he had been involved in, all the things he had done. He told me he wanted to do something to make it right, that he would have done something much sooner but he had been a coward, knowing he would be killed if he tried. He also said he was afraid for me, that the people he was involved with wouldn’t hesitate to attack someone’s family to send a message. He was planning to do something now, something that would make things right, he told me, but if he did it I might be in danger.”
    “What was he going to do?”
    “I don’t know. But I told him I couldn’t accept being a hostage to a corrupt system, that if we were going to reconcile he would have to act without regard to me.”
    I considered. “That was brave of you.”
    She looked at me, in full control again. “Not really. Don’t forget, I’m a radical.”
    “Well, we know he was talking to that reporter, Bulfinch, that he was supposed to deliver a disk. We need to figure out what was supposed to be on it.”
    “How?”
    “I think by contacting Bulfinch directly.”
    “And telling him what?”
    “I haven’t figured that part out yet.”
    We were quiet for a minute, and I started to feel exhaustion setting in.
    “Why don’t we get some sleep,” I said. “I’ll take the couch, all right? And we can talk more tomorrow. Things will seem clearer then.”
    I knew they couldn’t get any murkier.

CHAPTER 12
    I got up early the next morning and went straight to Shibuya Station. I had a few items hidden in my place in Sengoku, among them false passports, which I’d want if I had to leave the country suddenly. I told Midori to go out only when she really had to, knowing she would need to buy food and a change of clothes, and not to use plastic for any purchases. I also told her to keep her mobile phone off unless she really needed it, and to keep moving if she did.
    I took the Yamanote line to Ikebukuro, a crowded, anonymous commercial and entertainment center in the northwest of the city. From there, I caught a cab to Hakusan, a residential neighborhood about a ten-minute walk from my apartment, where I got out and dialed the voicemail account that’s attached to the phone in my apartment.
    The phone has a few special features. I can call in anytime from a remote location and silently activate the unit’s speakerphone, essentially turning it into a transmitter. The unit is also sound activated: if there’s a noise in the room, a human voice, for example, the unit’s speakerphone feature is silently activated and it dials a voicemail account I keep in the States, where telco competition keeps the price of such things reasonable. Before I go home, I always call the voicemail number. If someone has been in my apartment in my absence, I’ll know.
    The truth is, the phone is probably unnecessary. Not only has no one ever been in my apartment unannounced; no one even knows where I really live. I pay for a six-mat flat in Ochanomizu, but I never go there. The place in Sengoku is leased under a corporate name with no connection to me. If you’re in this line of work, you’d better have an additional identity or two.
    I looked up and down the street, listening to the beeps as the call snaked its way under the Pacific. When the connection went through, I punched in my code.
    Every time I’ve done this, except for when I periodically test the system, I’ve listened to a mechanical woman’s voice say, “You have no calls.” I was expecting the same today.
    Instead the message was, “You have one call.”
    Son of a bitch.
I was so startled I couldn’t remember what button to press to hear the message, but the mechanical voice prompted me. Barely breathing, I pressed the “one” key.
    I heard a man’s voice, speaking Japanese. “Small place. Hard to catch him by surprise when he comes in.”
    Another man’s voice, also in Japanese: “Wait here, on the side of the
genkan.
When he arrives, spray him.”
    Pepper spray, presumably. I