A Lonely Resurrection

to sleep was Midori, and how she had said in her letter that she wanted to present an offering for my spirit.
    • • •
    I woke up the next day feeling refreshed.
    Later I would call Harry and arrange a meeting for that night. But first, I wanted to map out an SDR that I’d ask him to use beforehand.
    Putting together the route took most of the afternoon. Every element had to be done right or the route itself would be a failure. It had to move through areas with which Harry was already familiar because he wasn’t going to have an opportunity to practice. Also, at several junctures, timing would be important, and I had to walk the entirety of both Harry’s route and mine to ensure that our paths would cross only as planned. I took detailed notes as I went along, using some typing paper I picked up at a stationery store.
    When I was done, I stopped at a coffee shop and created a map with notations on a single sheet of paper. Then I made my way to Shin-Okubo, north of Shinjuku and a bastion of the Korean mob, where, among the unlicensed doctors and unadvertised shops hidden in crumbling apartment buildings, I was able to purchase a cloned mobile phone for cash, with no ID.
    Next stop was Harry’s neighborhood in Iikura, just south of Roppongi, where I found a suitable Lawson’s convenience store not far from his apartment. I browsed in the reading section, folding the map into one of the magazines there.
    I called him from a payphone at seven that evening. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” I told him.
    “Hey, what’s going on?” he asked. “I didn’t expect to hear from you for a while.”
    He didn’t sound groggy. Maybe he’d gotten up to see Yukiko off to the office.
    “I missed you,” I said. “You alone?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I need a favor.”
    “Name it.”
    “Are you free right now?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay. I need you to go outside and call me from a payphone. There’s one outside the Lawson’s at Azabu Iikura Katamachi, to the left as you’re facing the store. Use it. I’ll give you my number.”
    “This line is okay, you know that.”
    “Just in case. This is sensitive.” I used our usual code to give him my mobile number.
    Ten minutes later the unit rang. “Okay, what’s so sensitive?” he asked.
    “I think someone might be following you.”
    There was short silence. “Are you serious?”
    “Stop looking over your shoulder. If they’re there right now I don’t want you to tip them off. You wouldn’t see them that way anyway.”
    Another silence. Then: “I don’t get it. I’m awfully careful.”
    “I know you are.”
    “Why do you think this?”
    “Not over the phone.”
    “You want to meet?”
    “Yes. But I want you to pick something up first. I’ve inserted a note behind the back cover of the second-to-the-back issue of this week’s
TV Taro
in the Lawson’s you’re next to. Go inside and retrieve the note. Make sure you make it look natural, in case somebody’s close. Pick up a carton of milk, some prepared food, like you’re just grabbing something quick and easy for dinner to take back to your apartment. Take it all home, wait a half hour, then go out and call me again from a different phone. Be ready for a two-hour walk.”
    “Will do.”
    A half hour passed. The mobile phone rang again.
    “You retrieve it?” I asked.
    “Yeah. I see what you’re up to.”
    “Good. Just follow the route. Start at eight-thirty sharp. When you’re done, wait for me at the place I’ve indicated on the note. You know how to interpret the place I’ve indicated.”
    My reference to “interpretation” was a reminder that he wasn’t to take our meeting place literally, but was instead to use the Tokyo Yellow Pages per our usual code to divine my true intent. If people were following Harry and they moved on him right now, presumably they’d pick up the note, see the location of the meet, and go to the wrong place to ambush me.
    “Understood,” he said.
    “Be cool. You’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ll explain everything when I see you. And don’t worry if I’m a little late.”
    “No worries. I’ll see you later.”
    I hung up.
    Harry had been clean when we’d gotten together at Teize, but that didn’t mean he’d been clean beforehand. I’d taught him to start out his SDRs unobtrusively, acting like any other civilian so that anyone who might be watching him would be lulled into believing he was no more than that. But the low-level stuff was only for the