A Lonely Resurrection

thinking of the way Murakami had growled
Your name isn’t Arai. It’s Rain.
“They’d learned who I was and knew where to find me. They didn’t need Harry after that. And Yukiko would have learned about some of his skills—he was former NSA, a top hacker. They would have viewed him as an asset of mine. Best to take him off the board.”
    I thought of how deeply Harry had been in denial, how hostile he’d been to any suggestion that Yukiko might be setting him up. I sighed. “That’s probably how they found out who I was, too,” I said. “Harry and I had an argument about the girl. He probably told her he had a friend who said this and that, a friend her boss had recently taken to Damask Rose. They might have put two and two together from that. Or they might have shown the video from the club to Yamaoto, who knows my face. It doesn’t matter. Once they knew, they decided Harry had to go.”
    There was a long silence. Then Tatsu said, “Kanezaki-san, what do you propose to do?”
    Kanezaki looked at him, his expression uncertain. “Well, originally I wanted someone non-Agency to run countersurveillance for me tonight. So I could know whether I’m being watched, or being set up, or whatever. But not you. You’re. . .”
    Tatsu smiled. “I am Keisatsucho
.”
    “Right. It wouldn’t do to have the Japanese FBI observing a CIA meeting with a sensitive national asset.”
    “I thought tonight’s meeting was fictitious, designed to test your theory that someone wishes your assets ill.”
    “It is fictitious. But I’ve filled out paperwork saying it’s real. If I get caught with you, the consequences will be the same.”
    Tatsu shrugged. “If someone sees us together, you can tell them you are developing me as an asset. Following up on the original contact you and Station Chief Biddle made when you were looking for our friend here.”
    Kanezaki looked at him. “Maybe I am developing you.”
    I thought,
Tatsu knew you were going to say that, kid.
    “You see?” Tatsu asked. “Not so far-fetched.”
    I thought of an old poker players’ expression:
If you look around the table and can’t spot the sucker, the sucker is you.
    No one said anything for a long time. Then Kanezaki let out a long breath and said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I could go to jail.”
    “For a meeting with a potentially important asset?” Tatsu asked, and I knew the deal was closed.
    “Right,” Kanezaki said, more to himself than to anyone else. “That’s right.”
    I thought of another saying I’d once heard:
It’s easiest to sell to a salesman.
    All that training in how to suborn an asset into signing a receipt. Kanezaki had practically bragged about how adroitly a good case officer could do it. And yet he’d just stepped over a line without even looking down to see if it was there.
    I thought of those pictorial representations of the food chain, a fish being swallowed by a bigger fish being swallowed by an even bigger one.
    I glanced at Kanezaki and thought,
At least Tatsu won’t betray you. Unless he absolutely has to.

CHAPTER 18
    W e all departed so Kanezaki could go to his “meeting” and Tatsu could have men run countersurveillance for him. We agreed to meet back at Christie in two hours. I asked Tatsu before we left whether he’d managed to get another gun for me. He told me he hadn’t.
    I spent a short time browsing among the antiques in the basement of the nearby Hanae Mori Building. The shops were closed, but through the windows I admired the delicate Art Nouveau cameo glassware of artists like Daum Nancy and Emile Gallé. I lost myself in the little worlds depicted on the vases and tumblers: a green meadow inhabited by hovering dragonflies; windmills slumbering under a blanket of snow; a forest of trees so sensuous they seemed to sway in their glass etchings.
    I returned to Christie well in advance of our follow-up meeting, but I didn’t wait there. Instead, I checked the places a surveillance team would use if it were interested in someone in the shop, and then, confirming these spots were deserted, I perched like one of Tokyo’s baleful ravens in the darkness atop the incline to the right of the shop, observing its entrance. Only after I had seen Kanezaki and then Tatsu return, and only after I had waited to ensure they weren’t followed, did I descend and join them.
    “We’ve been waiting,” Tatsu said when I came in. “I didn’t want to start without you.”
    “Sorry,” I