Rainfall

the information that is now on that disk. It seems that, in the end, everyone trusts a reporter more than a cop. Kawamura decided to give the disk to Bulfinch instead.”

    “How do you know?”

    “Kawamura called me the morning he died.”

    “What did he say?”

    He looked at me, deadpan. “ ‘Fuck off. I’m giving the disk to the Western media.’ It’s my fault, really. In my eagerness, I’d been putting too much pressure on him. I’m sure he found it unpleasant.”

    “How did you know it was Bulfinch?”

    “If you wanted to give this kind of information to someone in the ‘Western media,’ who would you go to? Bulfinch is well known for his reporting on corruption. But I couldn’t be sure until this morning, when I learned of his murder. And I wasn’t completely certain until just now.”

    “So this is why you’ve been following Midori.”

    “Of course.” Tatsu has a dry way of saying “of course” that always seems to emphasize some lack of mental acuity on the part of the listener. “Kawamura died almost immediately after he called me, meaning it was likely that he was unable to deliver the disk to the ‘Western media’ as planned. His daughter had his things. She was a logical target.”

    “That’s why you were investigating the break-in at her father’s apartment.”

    He looked at me disapprovingly. “My men performed that break-in. We were looking for the disk.”

    “Two chances to look for it — the break-in, and then the investigation,” I said, admiring his efficiency. “Convenient.”

    “Not convenient enough. We couldn’t find it. This is why we turned our attention to the daughter.”

    “You and everyone else.”

    “You know, Rain-san,” he said, “I had a man following her in Omotesando. He had a most unlikely accident in the bathroom of a local bar. His neck was broken.”

    Christ, that was Tatsu’s man. So maybe Benny had been serious about giving me forty-eight hours to accept the Midori assignment. Not that it mattered anymore. “Really,” I said.

    “On the same night I had men waiting at the daughter’s apartment. Despite being armed, they were ambushed and overcome by a single man.”

    “Embarrassing,” I said, waiting for more.

    He took out a cigarette, studied it for a moment, then placed it in his mouth and lit it. “Academic,” he said, exhaling a cloud of gray smoke. “It’s over. The CIA has the disk now.”

    “Why do you say that? What about Yamaoto?”

    “I have means of knowing that Yamaoto is still searching for the disk. There is only one other player in this drama, besides me. That player must have taken the disk from Bulfinch.”

    “If you’re talking about Holtzer, he’s working with Yamaoto.”

    He smiled the sad smile. “Holtzer isn’t working with Yamaoto, he’s Yamaoto’s slave. And, like most slaves, he’s looking for a way to escape.”

    “I don’t follow you.”

    “Yamaoto controls Holtzer through blackmail, as he controls all his puppets. But Holtzer is playing a double game. He plans to use that disk to bring Yamaoto down, to cut the puppet master’s strings.”

    “So Holtzer hasn’t told Yamaoto that the Agency has the disk.”

    He shrugged. “As I said, Yamaoto is still looking for it.”

    “Tatsu,” I said quietly, “what’s on that disk?”

    He took a tired pull on his cigarette, then blew the smoke skyward. “Videos of extramarital sexual acts, audio of bribes and payoffs, numbers of secret accounts, records of illegal real estate transactions and money laundering.”

    “Implicating Yamaoto?”

    He looked at me as though wondering how I could be so slow. “Rain-san, you were a great soldier, but you would make a very shitty cop. Implicating everyone
but
Yamaoto.”

    I was silent for a moment while I tried to connect the dots. “Yamaoto uses this information as blackmail?”

    “Of course,” he replied in his dry way. “Why do you think we have had nothing but failed administration after failed administration? Eleven prime ministers in as many years? Every one of them has either been an LDP flunky or a reformer who is immediately co-opted and defused. This is Yamaoto, governing from the shadows.”

    “But he’s not even part of the LDP.”

    “He doesn’t want to be. He is much more effective governing as he does. When a politician displeases him, incriminating information is released, the media is instructed to magnify it, and the offending politician is