A Lonely Resurrection

entire city. Or a countrywide run on banks and loss of deposits. Whatever it is, it will finally be of sufficient magnitude to shake Japan’s voters from their apathy. Yamaoto knows that violent disgust with an existing regime historically tends to cause an extremist backlash. This was true in Weimar Germany and Czarist Russia, to list only two examples.”
    “People would finally vote for change.”
    “Yes. The question is, a change to what?”
    “You think Yamaoto is trying to position himself to surf that coming wave of outrage?”
    “Of course. Look at Murakami’s training course for assassins. This will augment Yamaoto’s ability to silence and intimidate. Such an ability is one of the historical prerequisites of all fascist movements. I’ve told you before, Yamaoto is at heart a rightist.”
    I thought of some of the good news from the provinces I’d been reading, how some of the politicians there were standing up to the bureaucrats and other corrupt interests, opening up the books, eschewing the public works projects that have all but buried the country under poured concrete.
    “And you’re working with untainted politicians to make sure Yamaoto isn’t the outraged voters’ only choice?” I asked.
    “I do what I can,” he said.
    Translation: I’ve told you as much as you need to know.
    But I knew the disk, practically a who’s who of Yamaoto’s network of corruption, would have provided by negative implication an invaluable roadmap to who was absent from that network. I imagined Tatsu working with the good guys, warning them, trying to protect them. Positioning them like stones on a
go
board.
    I told him about Damask Rose and Murakami’s apparent connection to the place.
    “Those women are being used to set up and suborn Yamaoto’s enemies,” he said, when I was done.
    “Not all of them,” I said, thinking of Naomi.
    “No, not all. Some of them might not even know what is happening, though I imagine they would at least suspect. Yamaoto prefers to run such establishments as legitimate enterprises. Doing so makes them difficult to ferret out and dislodge. Ishihara, the weightlifter, was instrumental in that capacity. It’s good that he is gone.”
    He wiped his forehead again. “I find it interesting that Murakami seems to have an important function with regard to that end of Yamaoto’s means of control, as well. He may be even more vital to Yamaoto’s power than I had first suspected. No wonder Yamaoto is attempting to diversify. He needs to reduce his dependence on this man.”
    “Tatsu,” I said.
    He looked at me, and I sensed he knew what was coming.
    “I’m not going to take him out.”
    There was a long pause. His face was expressionless.
    “I see,” he said, his voice quiet.
    “It’s too dangerous. It was dangerous before, and now they’ve got my picture on Damask Rose home video. If the wrong person sees that picture, they’ll know who I am.”
    “Their interest is in politicians and bureaucrats and the like. The chance of that video making its way to Yamaoto, or to one of the very few other people in his organization who might recognize your face, seems remote.”
    “It doesn’t seem remote to me. Anyway, this guy is a hard target, very hard. To take out someone like that and make it look natural, it’s almost impossible.”
    He looked at me. “Make it look unnatural, then. The stakes are high enough to take that chance.”
    “I might do that. But I’m no good with a sniper rifle, and I’m not going to use a bomb because bystanders would get blown up, too. And short of those two options, putting this guy down and getting away clean is too much of a long shot.”
    I realized I’d allowed myself to start arguing with him on practical grounds. I should have just told him no and shut my mouth.
    Another long pause. Then he said, “What does he make of you, do you think?”
    I took a deep lungful of the moist air and let it out. “I don’t know. On the one hand, he’s seen what I can do. On the other hand, I don’t send out danger vibes the way he does. He can’t control that sort of thing, so it wouldn’t occur to him that someone else could.”
    “He underestimates you, then.”
    “Maybe. But not by much. People like Murakami don’t underestimate.”
    “You’ve proven you can get close to him. I could get you a gun.”
    “I told you, he’s always with at least two bodyguards.”
    The second I said it I wished I hadn’t. Now we were negotiating.