Hard Rain

mean a taxi.
    I took a cab to Azabu Juban subway station, then walked around 3-chome
    until I found her building. Standard upscale apartment manshon, tan
    ferroconcrete, new and spiffy-looking. Straightforward front entrance
    with double glass doors, electronically controlled. Security camera
    mounted on the ceiling just inside the glass.
    The building was on the corner of a one-way street. I moved to the
    back, where I found a secondary entrance smaller, more discreet than
    the first, something that only residents would use. This one had no
    camera.
    The second access point complicated things. If I waited at the wrong
    entrance, I would miss her entirely.
    I considered. All these streets were one-way, one of Azabu Juban's
    trademarks. If she were coming from Damask Rose, the cab would have to
    pass the second entrance first. Most likely she would get out there.
    Even if the cab continued around to the front, though, I'd have time to
    dash around behind it and get to her before she went inside.
    Okay. I looked around for the right place. Ordinarily, when I'm
    setting someone up, I try for maximum concealment and surprise. But
    that's prior to a fatal encounter. Here, I was hoping just to talk. If
    I scared her too much, made her feel too vulnerable, she would just run
    inside and that would be the end of it.
    There was a perpendicular side street that led to where I was standing,
    dead-ending just to the side of the second entrance to her building. I
    walked down it. I noticed an awning on the side of the building to my
    left, under the shadow of which were stacked several large plastic
    garbage bins. I could wait in those shadows quietly, and even someone
    walking right past me would be unlikely to notice.
    I checked my watch. Almost two. I killed time walking around the
    neighborhood. I passed no more than a half-dozen people. By three the
    area would be almost completely deserted.
    I thought about what I'd seen at the club earlier. I knew from Tatsu
    that Yamaoto relied in part on blackmail and extortion to run his
    network of compliant politicians. Tatsu had told me that the disk
    Midori's father had taken from Yamaoto contained, among other things,
    video of politicians in compromising positions. Tatsu had also told me
    that Yamaoto and Murakami were connected. So it seemed likely that
    Damask Rose was one of the places at which Yamaoto went about capturing

politicians in the midst of embarrassing acts.
    Meaning that someone in Yamaoto's network now had my face on film. That
    would have been bad under any circumstances. But Murakami's new
    interest made things worse. I judged it probable that Murakami might
    show the video to someone as part of a further background check. He
    might even show it to Yamaoto, who knew my face. And I'd used the
    weightlifter's name as an introduction to Murakami's dojo. If they
    figured out who they were actually dealing with, they'd also figure out
    that the weightlifter's 'accident' had been anything but.
    I tried to put together the rest of it. Yukiko, meaning someone higher
    up at Damask Rose, meaning perhaps
    Yamaoto, was trying to get hooks into Harry. If they were interested
    in Harry, it would only be because Harry might lead them to me.
    What about the Agency? They'd been following Harry. According to
    Kanezaki, as a conduit to me. The question was, were Yamaoto and the
    CIA working together in some capacity, or was their interest merely
    convergent? If the former, what was the nature of the connection? If
    the latter, what was the nature of the interest?
    Naomi might be able to help me answer these questions, if I played it
    right. I needed to resolve things quickly, too. Even if Harry's
    relevance to these people was only as a means of getting close to me,
    he could still be in danger. And if Murakami figured out that Arai
    Katsuhiko was really John Rain, both Harry and I were going to have a
    significant problem on our hands.
    At just before three, it started raining. I walked quickly back to her
    apartment and took up my position in the shadows near her building. I
    was out of the rain under the awning, but it was getting chilly. My
    leg ached from where Adonis had kicked me. I stretched to stay
    limber.
    At 3:20, a cab turned onto the street. I watched it from the shadows
    until it passed me. There, in back, Naomi.
    The cab turned left and stopped just beyond the secondary entrance to
    the building. The automatic passenger door opened a crack and the dome
    light went