Hard Rain

made its way
    to Japan from England, its surface dominated by a black leather insert
    appropriately worn by more than a century of pressure from the pen
    points that moved over its surface to transact business across the
    oceans, conveying news that might be weeks old by the time it reached
    relatives abroad, announcing births and deaths, offering
    congratulations, felicitations, condolences, and regrets. One of those
    fantastically complicated but astonishingly comfortable Herman Miller
    Aeron desk chairs that I'd picked up on a whim from a recently demised
    technology start-up in Shibuya's Bit Valley. Atop the desk, a
    Macintosh G4 computer and a gorgeous, 2 3-inch flat panel monitor,
    about which I'd said nothing to Harry because he was under the
    impression that I was a computer primitive and I saw no advantage in
    letting him know that I have my own knack for getting behind the odd
    firewall when the need arises.
    Opposite the couch was a Bang & Olufsen home theater with a six-CD
    changer. Next to it, a bookshelf containing an extensive collection of
    CDs, most of them jazz, and my modest library. The library includes a
    number of books on the bugei, or warrior arts, some of them quite old
    and obscure, containing information on combat techniques thought to be
    too dangerous for modern judo spine locks, neck cranks, and the like
    techniques that are, consequently, largely lost to the art. There are
    also some well-thumbed works of philosophy Mishima, Musashi, Nietzsche.
    And there are a number of slim volumes that I order from time to time
    from some unusual publishers in the States, volumes that are illegal in
    Japan and in other countries lacking America's perhaps overly strong
    devotion to freedom of speech, but which I manage to acquire
    nonetheless through techniques garnered from some of the volumes
    themselves. There are works on the latest surveillance methods and
    technologies; police investigative techniques and forensic science;
    acquiring forged identity; setting up offshore accounts and mail drops;
    methods of disguise and evasion; lock-picking and breaking and entry;
    and related topics. Of course, over the years I have developed my own
    substantial expertise in all these areas, but I have no plan to write a
    how-to account of my experiences. Instead, I read these books to learn
    what the opposition knows, to understand how the people I might be up
    against think, to predict where they might come after me, to take the
    appropriate counter-measures.
    The only conspicuous item in the apartment was a wooden wing-chun
    training dummy, about the dimensions of a large man, which I had placed
    in the center of the apartment's lone tatami room. Had the apartment
    been occupied by a family, this might have been the location of the
    kotatsu, a low table with a heavy quilted skirt draping to the floor
    and an electric brazier underneath, around which the family would
    nestle in the winter, their shoeless feet warmed by the brazier, their
    legs tucked comfortably under the quilted skirt, as they gossiped about
    the neighbors, examined the household bills, perhaps planned for the
    children's future.
    But the wooden dummy represented a better use for me. I'd been
    training in judo for almost the quarter century I'd been in Japan, and
    loved the art's emphasis on throws and ground fighting. But once
    Holtzer and the Agency had connected me to the Kodokan judo center in
    Tokyo, I knew joining the Osaka branch would have been too obvious a
    move, like a recent entrant to the federal witness protection program
    resubscribing to the same obscure magazines he'd always enjoyed before
    moving underground. For now, I felt safer training alone. The dummy
    kept my reflexes sharp and the striking surfaces of my hands callused
    and hard, and allowed me to practice some of the strikes and blocks I'd
    neglected to some degree while training in judo. It would have made an
    interesting conversation piece, if anyone ever visited my apartment.
    During the days that followed, I busied myself with my preparations for
    leaving Osaka. Moving hastily would be a mistake: the transitions are
    where you're most vulnerable, and someone who couldn't track me now
    might very well find himself able to do so if I dove suddenly into a
    less securely back stopped life. And Tatsu might be expecting me to
    move quickly; if so, he would be prepared to follow me. Conversely, if
    I stayed put, he might be lulled, giving me the opportunity to lose