A Lonely Resurrection

that.”
    “Work with me.”
    “You’re a broken record, Tatsu.”
    “You sound like my wife again.”
    I laughed.
    “How does it feel, to have been part of something larger than yourself?” he asked.
    I held up my taped and plastered arm. “Like this.”
    He smiled his sad smile. “That only means you are alive.”
    I shrugged. “I admit it beats the alternatives.”
    “If you need anything, ever, call me.”
    I stood. He followed suit.
    We bowed and shook hands. I walked away.
    I walked for a long time. East, toward Tokyo Station, toward the bullet train that would take me back to Osaka. Tatsu knew where to find me, but I could live with that for the time being.
    I wondered what I would do when I got there. Yamada, my alter ego, was nearly ready to move. But I no longer knew where to send him.
    I needed to contact Naomi. I wanted to contact her. I just didn’t know what I was going to say.
    Yamaoto was still out there. Tatsu had dealt him a few solid blows, but he was still standing. Probably still looking for me. And maybe the Agency with him.
    As I walked, the sky grew darker. A wind shook the branches of the city’s pollution-inured trees.
    Tatsu had been upbeat. I wondered what deep wellspring fed his optimism. I wished I could share it. But I was too aware of Harry in the ground, of Midori gone for good, of Naomi waiting for an uncertain answer.
    Fat droplets of rain started splattering against the city’s concrete skin, against the glass windows of its eyes. A few people with umbrellas opened them. The rest ran for cover.
    I walked on, through it all. I tried to think of it as a baptism, a new beginning.
    Maybe it was. But what a lonely resurrection.

AUTHOR’S NOTE
    R eaders familiar with Roppongi and Akasaka-Mitsuke in Tokyo will note that, while several hostess bars and “gentlemen’s clubs” resemble Damask Rose, none is an exact match. Otherwise, the Tokyo and Osaka locales that appear in this book are described as I have found them.

DEEPEST THANKS
    T o a remarkable transpacific team: my agents, Nat Sobel and Judith Weber of Sobel Weber Associates in New York and Ken Mori of Tuttle Mori in Tokyo; and my editors, David Highfill of Putnam in New York and Masaru Suzuki of Sony’s Village Books in Tokyo, for all their continued enthusiasm, insight, and support.
    To my dear friend and
sensei
Koichiro Fukasawa of Wasabi Communications, for continuing to shine a clear light on so much of Japan and the Japanese—and for a great website, too.
    To Evan Rosen, M.D. Ph.D., and Peter Zimetbaum, M.D., both of the Harvard medical system, for consistently overcoming their queasiness at my questions about the medical implications of killing techniques, for accepting that the Hippocratic Oath might not apply to fiction, and for assisting John Rain in all his endeavors with their considerable knowledge and imaginative faculties.
    To Lori Kupfer, for her insights into what sophisticated, sexy women like Midori and Naomi wear and how they think, and for helpful comments on the manuscript.
    To Ernie Tibaldi, a thirty-one-year veteran agent of the FBI, for generously sharing his extensive surveillance and investigative experiences, for recommending many good books and other sources of information, and for helpful comments on the manuscript.
    To Carla Mendes, for furthering my understanding of Brazil and Brazilians and for refining Rain’s attempts at Portuguese.
    To Marc “Animal” MacYoung and Peyton Quinn, warrior philosophers both, for their many excellent books and videos on violence and street etiquette. In particular, John Rain owes to MacYoung his philosophy regarding unarmed defenses against the knife, and to Quinn the notion of being “interviewed” as a potential victim.
    To Masao Miyamoto, for his horrifyingly humorous book
Straightjacket Society,
some of whose ideas on the nature of Big Brother in Japan Tatsu has borrowed.
    To Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman, for his disturbing, original book,
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society,
which provided so many insights into the origins and psychology of John Rain.
    To Alex Kerr, for his book
Dogs and Demons,
a meticulously researched and argued account of Japanese corruption and an insensate bureaucracy gone mad, which provided some of the backstory for the novel.
    To Brian Koppelman, from whose movie
Rounders
Rain borrowed the excellent observation, “If you look around the table and can’t spot the sucker, the