A Lonely Resurrection

were wide, searching for me in the darkness. “Kanezaki is paying you, isn’t he?” he groaned.
    I considered for a moment. “No. No one’s paying me. For once, I’m doing something just because I want to. Although I wouldn’t call that good news, from your perspective.”
    “Well, I can pay you. The Agency can. It’s a new world we’re in, and I told you we want you to be a part of it.”
    I chuckled. “You sound like a recruiting billboard. Now tell me about Yamaoto.”
    “I’m serious. Post Nine-Eleven, the Agency needs people like you. This is why we’ve been looking for you.”
    “I’m going to ask my question again. For free. If I have to repeat myself after this, though, the shot that just put you on the ground is going to seem like a caress.”
    There was a long pause, then he said, “All right.” He got slowly to his feet, keeping his weight off his injured leg. “Look, Yamaoto has his interests, and we have ours. There’s just an alignment right now, that’s all. An alliance of convenience.”
    “To what end? I thought Crepuscular was supposed to help reformers here.”
    He nodded. “Reform would be good for the U.S. in the long-term, but it would also create problems. Look, Japan is the world’s largest creditor. It has over three-hundred-billion dollars invested in U.S. treasury bills alone. In the short term, real reform would mean Japanese bank closings, bank closings would mean bank runs, and bank runs would force banks to repatriate their overseas capital to cover fleeing depositors. If reforms eventually work, though, and the economy improves, yen-based holdings will become more attractive, and Japanese banks will move their dollar- and Euro-based holdings home, where they might earn a better return.”
    He had pulled himself together pretty nicely. Maybe I hadn’t been giving him enough credit.
    “So whoever’s calling the shots in the USG right now prefers the status quo,” I said.
    “We like to refer to it as ‘stability,’” he said, putting some weight on his injured leg and wincing.
    I scanned the area around us. All quiet. “Because the status quo keeps all those trillions of yen safely parked in the U.S., where they prop up the American economy.”
    “That’s right. To put it crudely, America is addicted to a continuing influx of foreign capital to support its deficit spending, and it gets the balance of its fix from Japan. There are elements in the USG that don’t want that to change.”
    I shook my head. “That’s not crude, it’s nicely put. America is addicted to cheap oil, and props up brutal regimes in the Middle East to feed its habit. If the USG is supporting corrupt elements in Japan because those elements guarantee continued access to Japanese capital, Uncle Sam is just being consistent.”
    “I supposed that’s not unfair. But I don’t make policy. I just carry it out.”
    “So this is why Crepuscular was shut down six months ago,” I said. “Some newly ascendant faction in the USG decided it wasn’t in Uncle Sam’s interest to further reform in Japan after all.”
    “The opposite,” he said. He started to put his hands in his trench coat pockets.
    “Keep your hands where I can see them,” I said sharply.
    He jumped. “Sorry, I’m just a little cold. How can you see anything, anyway? It’s pitch dark in here.”
    “What do you mean, ‘the opposite’?”
    “Crepuscular was never intended to further reform. It was conceived as a way of suborning reformers from the beginning. Whoever ordered its termination was a supporter of reform. But certainly not a realist.”
    “You would be one of the realists, then.”
    He straightened slightly. “That’s right. Along with some of the institutions that make U.S. foreign policy. The ones without blinders or the pressure of political constituencies. Look, the politicians press Japan to reform because they don’t understand what’s really going on. And what’s really going on is that Japan is past reform. Maybe ten, even five years ago, it could have been done. But not anymore. Things have gone too far here. The politicians in America are always talking about ‘biting the bullet’ and ‘strong medicine,’ but they don’t understand that if you try to bite this bullet, it’ll go through your head. That the patient is so weak, an operation would kill him. We’re past hope of a cure, it’s time to move into more of a pain-management approach.”
    “It’s a moving story, Dr.