Hard Rain

he said, nodding.
    The waitress brought our order. I started wolfing down the sandwich.
    He was feeling talkative and I wanted to hear more. We would get to
    Harry soon enough.
    "Tell me more about Crepuscular," I said, between bites.
    "Like what?"
    "Like when did it get started. And how you learned of it."
    "I already told you. Eighteen months ago I was told that Tokyo Station
    had been tasked with an action program of assisting reform and removing
    impediments. Code name Crepuscular."
    Eighteen months ago, I thought. Hmm. "Who put you in charge of the
    program originally?" I asked, although given the timeline, I already
    had a pretty good idea of the answer.
    "The previous Station Chief. William Holtzer."
    Holtzer, I thought. His good works live on.
    "Tell me how he presented it to you," I said. "Be specific'
    He glanced to his left, which for most people is a neuro linguistic
    sign of recall rather than of construction. Had he looked in the
    opposite direction, I would have read it as a lie. "He told me that
    Crepuscular was compartmental classified, and that he wanted me to be
    in charge of it."
    "What was your precise role?"
    "Development of target assets, disbursement of funding, overall
    management of the program."
    "Why you?"
    He shrugged. "I didn't ask."
    I suppressed a laugh. "Did you assume it was only natural that,
    despite your youth and inexperience, he recognized your inherent
    capabilities and wanted to entrust you with something so important?"
    He flushed. "Something like that, I suppose."
    I closed my eyes briefly and shook my head. "Kanezaki, are you
    familiar with the terms "front man" and "fall guy"?"
    His flush deepened. "I might not be as stupid as you think," he
    said.
    "What else?"
    "Holtzer told me that support for reform would involve funneling cash
    to specified politicians with a reformist agenda, the kind of reforms
    favored by the USG. The theory was that, to compete in Japanese
    politics, you need access to large quantities of cash. You can't stay
    in office without it, so over time everyone either gets corrupted
    because they took the cash or weeded out because they refused to. We
    were going to change the equation with an alternate source of funds."
    "Funds acknowledged with receipts."
    "That's policy, yes. I've told you."
    "I imagine that, when your assets are signing the receipts, they handle
    them?"
    He shrugged. "Sure."
    I wondered briefly why they hired these guys right out of college. "I'm
    curious," I said, 'whether you can think of any uses to which someone
    might want to put signed, fingerprinted documents acknowledging receipt
    of CIA-disbursed funding."
    He shook his head. "It's not what you're thinking," he said. "The CIA
    doesn't use blackmail."
    I laughed.
    "Look, I'm not saying we don't use it because we're nice people," he
    went on with almost comedic earnestness. "It's because it's been
    demonstrated not to work. Maybe you can use it to get short-term
    cooperation, but in the long term it's just not an effective means of
    control."
    I looked at him. "Does the CIA strike you as an organization that's
    particularly focused on the long term?"
    "We try to be, yes."
    "Well, if you're not under investigation for embezzlement, and
    blackmail is an alien notion at the CIA, what do you think Biddle is
    doing with those receipts?"
    He looked down. "I don't know."
    "Then what do you want from me?"
    "There's one more thing that's strange."
    I raised my eyebrows.
    "Protocol is, before every asset meeting, case officers have to fill
    out a form with particulars of the anticipated meeting: who, where,
    when. The purpose is to provide a record that other case officers can
    use if anything goes wrong. After the Chief's request, I turned in the
    form saying I had an asset meeting tonight, although the truth is I
    don't, but I left the place of the meeting blank."
    "And you got called on it."
    "Right. Which is weird. No one should be taking an interest in these
    things before a meeting. They're for post-meeting contingencies. In
    fact, half the time, we don't even bother filling them out until
    afterward. It's too much of a pain. And you never hear anything about
    it."
    "What are you thinking?"
    "That someone is observing these meetings."
    "For what?"
    "I don't... I don't know."
    "Then I don't see how I can help you."
    "All right. It's possible someone is trying to gather some kind of
    evidence that I've been running Crepuscular by myself since it was
    terminated. Maybe in case it