Hard Rain

its exquisitely prepared
    brews, had been one of my regular haunts while I lived in Tokyo, or at
    least as regular as I allowed any one place to become. I missed it. I
    walked in the street-level door. The counterman issued a low
    irasshaimase but didn't look up. Instead, he continued pouring
    steaming water from a silver pot into a filter perched over a blue
    porcelain demitasse. He was leaning to the side so that he was eye
    level with the pot, his arm describing small circles in the air to
    ensure that the water dripped uniformly through the grounds in the
    filter. He looked like he was painting, or conducting a miniature
    orchestra. It was a pleasure to behold such practiced devotion and I
    couldn't help pausing to watch.
    When he was done he bowed and welcomed me again. I returned the
    gesture and made my way to the back. I turned left at the end of the
    L-shaped room and saw Harry sitting at one of the three back tables.
    "Hey," he said, standing up and offering his hand.
    I shook it. "Glad to see you found the place okay."
    He nodded. "Your directions were good."
    I looked at the table, empty but for a glass of ice water. "No
    coffee?"
    "I didn't know when you were going to get here, so I ordered two old
    beans demitasses. Something called the Nire Blend. It takes a
    half-hour to prepare. I figured you'd like it the waitress says it's
    "exceptionally intense."
    I smiled again. "It is. I'm not sure it'll be to your taste."
    He shrugged. "I like to try new things."
    Yukiko, I thought.
    We sat down. "Well? How did it turn out?" he asked.
    I took out Kanezaki's wallet and slid it across the table to him. "You
    were being followed," I said.
    He opened it and looked at the ID inside. "Oh, shit," he said
    softly.
    "CIA?"
    I nodded.
    "But how? Why?"
    I briefed him on my conversation with Kanezaki.
    "So it looks like they were interested in me only because they're
    interested in you," he said when I was done.
    I nodded slowly. "It looks that way."
    "I wonder if they know who I am, other than that I'm somehow connected
    to you."
    "Impossible to say. They might have cross-checked with other agencies,
    in which case they would know you were once with the NSA. But they're
    not always so thorough."
    "They did a nice job of tracking me from that letter, though. Stupid
    of me to send it."
    "There's more than meets the eye there. The letter alone doesn't sound
    like enough. But I didn't have time to ask."
    We were quiet for a minute. Then he said, "It might have been enough.
    I only signed it with my first name, but my parents chose three kanji,
    not the usual two." On his hand he traced the characters for 'spring,"
    'giving," and 'ambition," an unusual spelling for a common name.
    "They must have been watching Midori, too," I said.
    He nodded. "Yeah. She was a known point of contact. They might have
    been doing spot surveillance and mail checks, hoping she'd hear from
    you. Instead they got me."
    "I'll buy that," I said.
    "And I mailed that letter near the main Chu-oku post office, not so far
    from where I work. There would have been a postmark. They could have
    used it to work outward in concentric circles. That was dumb. I
    should have mailed it from somewhere out of the way."
    "You can't be too careful," I said, looking at him.
    He sighed. "I'm going to have to move again. Can't have them knowing
    where I live."
    "Don't forget, they also know where you work."
    "I don't care about that. A lot of what I do now, I do remotely. On
    the days where I have to go to and from the office, I'll run an
    extra-careful SDR."
    "You haven't been doing that already?"
    "Sorry. Not as much as I should be. But believe me, I'm careful when
    I go to see you."
    This was an unavoidable problem. Inside computer networks, Harry was
    pure stealth. But in the real world, he was mostly a civilian. A weak
    spot in my armor.
    I shrugged. "If you weren't, those guys would have gotten to me by
    now. Maybe at Teize, maybe another time. Your moves shook them
    off."
    He brightened a little at that, then said, "You don't think I'm in any
    danger, do you?"
    I thought about it. I hadn't mentioned that Kanezaki's partner hadn't
    survived our meeting. I told him now.
    "Shit," he said. "That's what I'm talking about. What if they want
    payback?"
    "I don't think they'd look to extract it from you. If this were
    ayaku%a thing, it might be a different story, they might come after my
    friends just to hurt me. But here, if they've got a beef, it's with
    me. You're no