Hard Rain

what
    action to take. I want him to be comfortable calling on me. Even
    eager."
    "Is he being set up, do you think?"
    He shrugged. "Who knows? Biddle's request for the receipts seems
    suspicious, as does that missing cable, but I don't pretend to
    understand all the CIA's bureaucratic procedures."
    "Why would Biddle have been taking such an inordinate interest in
    Kanezaki's meetings?"
    "I don't know. But it wasn't to photograph them. My men observed
    nothing out of place at the meeting site. Certainly no one with a
    camera."
    He was being awfully open with me about his duplicity. Perhaps his way
    of telling me that he trusted me. The in-group and the out-group. Us
    and them.
    We started walking again. "It was lucky, then, that the kid came to me
    with his suspicions," I said.
    "And that you came to me. Thank you for that."
    I shook my head, then said, "What do you know about Crepuscular?"
    "No more than what Kanezaki has told us."
    "The politicians the program has been underwriting are you working with
    any of them? Maybe the ones the disk didn't implicate?"
    "Some of them."
    "What happened? You learned from the disk that they weren't in
    Yamaoto's network. Then what?"
    "I warned them. Simply sharing my information on Yamaoto's methods,
    and on who among them was a Yamaoto stooge, turned them into
    considerably wiser, and harder, targets."
    "And you knew they were taking money from the CIA?"
    "I knew of some, not necessarily all. From my position, I can only
    help protect these people from Yamaoto's practices of extortion. But
    Kanezaki was correct in saying that in Japan's system of money
    politics, honest politicians still need cash to compete against
    Yamaoto-funded candidates. And that I cannot provide."
    We walked wordlessly for a minute. Then he said, "I admit I was
    surprised to learn that these people would be foolish enough to sign
    receipts for CIA disbursements. I fault myself, for underestimating
    the depth of their gullibility. I
    should have known better. As a breed, politicians can be astonishingly
    stupid, even when they are not being venal. If it were otherwise,
    Yamaoto would have a much harder time controlling them."
    I thought for a moment. "Forgive me for saying so, Tatsu, but isn't
    this whole thing just a waste of time?"
    "Why do you say?"
    "Because even if these guys have some ideals, even if you can protect
    them from Yamaoto, even if they have access to some cash, you know they
    can't make a difference. Politicians in Japan are just ornamentation.
    The bureaucrats run the show."
    "Our system is strange, is it not," he said. "An uncomfortable
    combination of domestic history and foreign intervention. The
    bureaucrats are certainly powerful. Functionally, they are the
    descendents of the samurai, with everything that lineage entails."
    I nodded. After the Meiji restoration in 1868, the samurai became the
    servants of the emperor, who was himself believed to be descended from
    the gods. The association connoted tremendous status.
    "Then the wartime system put them in charge of the industrial economy,"
    he continued. "The American occupation maintained this system so
    America could rule through the bureaucracy rather than through elected
    politicians. All this led to an accrual of additional prestige,
    additional power."
    "I've always said Japan's rule by bureaucracy is a kind of
    totalitarianism."
    "It is. But it is distinguished in that there is no Big Brother
    figure. Rather, the structure itself functions as Big Brother."
    "That's my point. What can you gain by protecting a handful of elected
    politicians?"
    "For the moment, perhaps not much. Today, the politicians act mainly
    as mediators between the bureaucrats and the voters. Their job is to
    secure for their constituents the biggest slice possible from the pie
    that the bureaucrats control."
    'like lobbyists in the U.S."
    "Yes. But the politicians are elected. The bureaucrats are not. This
    means that the voters do exercise theoretical control. If they elected
    politicians with a mandate to rein in the bureaucracy, the bureaucrats
    would bend, because their power is a function of their prestige, and to
    oppose a clear political consensus would be to risk that prestige."
    I didn't say anything. I understood his point, although I suspected
    his planning was so long-term as to be ultimately futile.
    We walked for a few moments in silence. Then he stopped and turned to
    me.
    "I would like you to have a chat with Station Chief Biddle," he