Hard Rain

database on people who had requested materials under
    the new Freedom of Information law, including information on their
    political views."
    He smiled his sad smile. "When the news broke, someone tried to delete
    the evidence."
    "I read about that. Didn't the LDP try to suppress a forty-page report
    on what had happened?"
    This time his smile was wry. "The Liberal Democratic Party officials
    involved in the attempted cover-up were punished, of course. They had
    their pay docked."
    "Now there's a deterrent to future abuses," I said, laughing.
    "Especially when you know they were greased with twice what got
    docked."
    He shrugged. "As a cop, I welcome Juki Net and the camera networks as
    a crime-fighting tool. As a citizen, I find it all appalling."
    "So why swear me to secrecy on this? Sounds like a few leaks would be
    just the thing."
    He cocked his head to the side, as though marveling at how my thinking
    could be so crude. "If such leaks were timed incorrectly," he said,
    'they would be as useless as a powerful but misplaced explosive
    charge."
    He was telling me he was up to something. He was also telling me not
    to ask.
    "So you used this network to find me," I said.
    "Yes. I kept the mug shots that were taken of you at Metropolitan
    Police Headquarters when you were detained after the incident outside
    of Yokosuka naval base. I had these photographs fed into the computer
    so that the network could look for you. I instructed the technicians
    to focus their initial efforts on Osaka. Still, because the system
    turns up so many false positives, the problem took a long time and
    significant human resources to solve. I have been looking for you for
    almost a year, Rain-san."
    I realized from what he was telling me that the relentless advance of
    technology was going to force me to return to the nomadic existence I
    had adopted between Vietnam and my return to Japan, when I had wandered
    the earth without an identity, drifting from one mercenary conflict to
    another. There was no pleasure in the thought. I had done my penance
    for Crazy Jake and didn't wish to repeat the experience.
    "The system is not perfect," he went on. "There are numerous gaps in
    coverage, for example, and, as I mentioned, too many false positives.
    Still, over time, we were able to identify certain commonalities in
    your movements. A high incidence of sightings in Miyakojima, for
    example. From there, it was simple enough to check the records of the
    local ward office for new resident registrations, weed out false leads,
    and uncover your address. Eventually, we were able to track you
    sufficiently closely so that I could travel to Osaka and follow you
    here tonight."
    "Why didn't you just come to my apartment?"
    He smiled. "Where you live is always where you are most vulnerable
    because it represents a possible choke point for an ambush. And I
    would not wish to surprise a man like you where he felt most
    vulnerable. Safer, I judged, to approach you on neutral ground, where
    you might even see me coming, tie?"
    I nodded, acknowledging his point. If you're a likely target for a
    kidnapping or assassination attempt, or for any other kind of ambush,
    the bad guys can only get to you where they know you're going to be.
    Meaning outside your home, most likely, or the place where you work. Or
    at some point in between where they can rely on you to show up maybe
    the only bridge crossing between your home and office, something like
    that. These choke points are where you need to be the most sensitive
    to signs of danger.
    "Well?" he asked, raising his eyebrows slightly. "Did you see me?"
    I shrugged. "Yes."
    He smiled again. "I knew you would."
    "Or you could have called."
    "In which case, you might have disappeared again after hearing my
    voice."
    "That's true."
    "All in all, I think this was the best approach."
    "The way you went about this," I said, 'a lot of people were involved.
    People in your organization, maybe people with the CIA."
    He might have said something to intimate that any such lack of security
    was my fault, for having failed to contact him as I had suggested I
    would. But that wouldn't have been Tatsu's style. He had his
    interests in this matter, as I had mine, and he wouldn't have blamed me
    for disappearing any more than he expected me to blame him for tracking
    me down.
    "There has been no mention of your name in any of this," he told me.
    "Only a photograph. And the technicians tasked with checking for the
    matches the system