A Lonely Resurrection

no one ever searches the files by cable number, it’s too much trouble, and anyway, ordinarily the number isn’t even relevant. I called someone at East Asia Division at Langley and had her read the cable to me over the phone. The cable said Crepuscular was being terminated and should be discontinued immediately because the funding was being applied elsewhere.”
    “You think someone on this end pulled the cable so you wouldn’t know the program had been terminated?”
    “Yes.”
    The waitress brought our order. I started wolfing down the sandwich.
    He was feeling talkative and I wanted to hear more. We would get to Harry soon enough.
    “Tell me more about Crepuscular,” I said, between bites.
    “Like what?”
    “Like when did it get started. And how you learned of it.”
    “I already told you. Eighteen months ago I was told Tokyo Station had been tasked with an action program of assisting reform and removing impediments. Code name Crepuscular.”
    Eighteen months ago,
I thought.
Hmm.
“Who put you in charge of the program originally?” I asked, though, given the timeline, I already had a pretty good idea of the answer.
    “The previous Station Chief. William Holtzer.”
    Holtzer,
I thought.
His good works live on.
    “Tell me how he presented it to you,” I said. “Be specific.”
    He glanced to his left, which for most people is a neurolinguistic sign of recall rather than of construction. Had he looked in the opposite direction, I would have read it as a lie. “He told me Crepuscular was compartmental classified, and that he wanted me to be in charge of it.”
    “What was your precise role?”
    “Development of target assets, disbursement of funding, overall management of the program.”
    “Why you?”
    He shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”
    I suppressed a laugh. “Did you assume it was only natural that, despite your youth and inexperience, he was astute enough to recognize your inherent capabilities, and wanted to entrust you with something so important?”
    He flushed. “Something like that, I suppose.”
    I closed my eyes briefly and shook my head. “Kanezaki, are you familiar with the terms ‘front man’ and ‘fall guy’?”
    His flush deepened. “I might not be as stupid as you think,” he said.
    “What else?”
    “Holtzer told me support for reform would involve funneling cash to specified politicians with a reformist agenda, the kind of reforms favored by the USG. The theory was that, to compete in Japanese politics, you need access to large quantities of cash. You can’t stay in office without it, so over time everyone either gets corrupted because they took the cash or weeded out because they refused to. We were going to change the equation with an alternate source of funds.”
    “Funds acknowledged with receipts.”
    “That’s policy, yes. I’ve told you.”
    “I imagine that, when your assets are signing the receipts, they handle them?”
    He shrugged. “Sure.”
    I wondered briefly why they hired these guys right out of college. “I’m curious,” I said, “whether you can you think of any uses to which someone might want to put signed, fingerprinted documents acknowledging receipt of CIA-dispersed funding.”
    He shook his head. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said. “The CIA doesn’t use blackmail.”
    I laughed.
    “Look, I’m not saying we don’t use it because we’re nice people,” he went on with almost comedic earnestness. “It’s because it’s been demonstrated not to work. Maybe you can use it to get short-term cooperation, but in the long-term it’s just not an effective means of control.”
    I looked at him. “Does the CIA strike you as an organization that’s particularly focused on the long-term?”
    “We try to be, yes.”
    “Well, if you’re not under investigation for embezzlement, and blackmail is an alien notion at the CIA, what do you think Biddle is doing with those receipts?”
    He looked down. “I don’t know.”
    “Then what do you want from me?”
    “There’s one more thing that’s strange.”
    I raised my eyebrows.
    “Protocol is, before every asset meeting, case officers have to fill out a form with particulars of the anticipated meeting: who, where, when. The purpose is to provide a record other case officers can use if anything goes wrong. After the Chief’s request, I turned in the form saying I had an asset meeting tonight, though the truth is I don’t, but I left the place of the meeting