Barry Eisler: Hard Rain

I MADE MY way out of the area on foot. I didn’t want to be seen, not even by an anonymous taxi driver.

I cleaned myself up in an all-night sauna, then stopped at a twenty-four-hour drugstore and bought a bottle of ibuprofen. I ate a half-dozen dry. My arm was throbbing.

Finally, I found a business hotel in Shibuya and collapsed into comalike sleep.

The sound of my pager awoke me. I heard it in my dreams as an automated garage door, then as a vibrating cell phone, then finally in the wakeful world for what it was.

I checked the readout. Tatsu. About fucking time. I went out, found a pay phone, and called him. It was already midday.

“Are you all right?” he asked me.

He must have heard about the carnage. “Never a cop around when you need one,” I told him.

“Forgive me for that.”

“If I’d gotten killed, I wouldn’t have. Under the circumstances, though, I feel magnanimous. I could use a doctor for an injured arm.”

“I’ll find someone. Can you meet me right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Where we parted last time.”

“Okay.”

I hung up.

I did an SDR that took me to Meguro station. Tatsu and Kanezaki were standing by the wickets.

Oh good , I thought. I needed a surprise .

I walked over. Tatsu pulled me aside.

“The theory is that there is a gang war under way,” he said to me. “An internal yakuza conflict. It will blow over.”

I looked at him. “You’ve heard, then.”

He nodded.

“Well?” I said. “Didn’t your parents teach you to say thank you?”

His face broke into a surprised grin and he actually patted me on the back. “Thank you,” he said. He looked at my arm, which I was cradling unnaturally close to my body. “I know someone who can take a look at that. But I think you’ll want to hear Kanezaki first.”

The three of us walked across the street to a coffee shop. As soon as we were seated and had ordered, Kanezaki said, “I learned something about your friend’s death. It’s not much, but you helped me out the way you promised, so I’ll tell you.”

“All right,” I said.

Kanezaki glanced at Tatsu. “Uh, Ishikura-san here briefed me on your meetings with Biddle and Tanaka. He told me that Biddle asked you to kill me.” He paused for a second. “Thanks for not taking him up on that,” he said.

“ Doitashimashite ,” I said, shaking my head slowly. Don’t mention it.

“After the last time we met,” he went on, “I wanted more information. For leverage over Biddle, to make sure he knew I had something on him in case he decided to try anything again.”

Fast learner , I thought. “What did you do?”

“I bugged his office.”

I looked at him, half-surprised, half-impressed by his apparent audacity. “You bugged the Chief of Station’s office?”

He smiled in a young, self-satisfied way that reminded me for a moment of Harry. “I did. His office is only swept for bugs every twenty-four hours, at regular intervals. Back at Headquarters I took the locks and picks course, so getting into his office to place the bug was no problem.”

“Impressive security,” I said.

He shrugged. “Security is generally effective against outside threats. But it wasn’t designed with inside threats in mind. Anyway, I can get in and out pretty much as I need to, putting the bug down to listen in, then removing it to avoid the sweeps.”

“You overheard something about Harry,” I said.

He nodded. “Yesterday, the Chief was on the phone with someone. I could only hear his half of the conversation, but I know he was talking to someone big, because it was ‘yes sir’ this and ‘no sir’ that.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Don’t worry. The thread we were following to try to contact Rain has been cut. No loose ends.” ’

“That’s not much.”

He shrugged. “To me it sounded like an acknowledgment that your friend’s death wasn’t an accident, that he was killed.”

I looked at him, and what he saw in my eyes made him blink. “Kanezaki,” I said, “if you feed me even the smallest bit of bullshit as a way of manipulating me into acting against your boss, it’ll be the worst mistake you ever made.”

He lost a bit of color, but other than that kept his cool. “I understand that. I’m not bullshitting you or trying to manipulate you. I told you before I’d tell you what I knew about your friend if you helped me, and you helped me. I’m just following through.”

I kept my eyes on him. “Nothing more about who ‘cut the thread’?”

He shook his head. “Nothing explicit. But the thrust of the conversation was about Yamaoto, so I think we can infer.”

“All right, infer.”

Tatsu broke in. “It seems that Biddle’s relationship with Yamaoto is not what I believed it to be. In certain critical ways they appear to be collaborators, not antagonists.”

“What does this have to do with Harry?” I asked.

“One of the things I overheard,” Kanezaki said, “is that Biddle plans to give the receipts to Yamaoto.”

The waiter brought our coffee and departed.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “I thought we all agreed that the USG wants to help Japan reform, while to Yamaoto reform is a mortal threat.”

“That’s true,” Kanezaki said.

“But now you think they’re working together.”

“From what I overheard, yes.”

“If that’s true, then Biddle might have been involved in Harry’s death. But why?”

“I’m not sure.”

I looked at Tatsu. “If the Agency is working with Yamaoto, it can only be to fuck your reformers. And now Biddle has all those receipts.”

Tatsu nodded. “We need to get them back. Before he turns them over to Yamaoto.”

“But it’s not just the receipts,” I said. “From what Tanaka told us, you’ve got to assume that several of Kanezaki’s meetings have been caught on videotape, with audio intercepted by parabolic mikes. What are you going to do about all that?”

“Nothing can be done,” Tatsu said. “As we discussed, any politician thus caught meeting with a CIA case officer is compromised. But the ones implicated only by virtue of the receipts can still be saved.”

“How?”

“A small percentage of politicians will be compromised both by the receipts and the photos. Doubtless Yamaoto plans to burn these unfortunates first. Then, during the ensuing media frenzy, he will release the balance of the receipts. The fact that there is no ‘hard’ video or audio evidence backing this second wave of revelations will be lost on the public.”

“So even though Yamaoto might still be able to burn the group he’s got on tape…”

“His efforts will be limited to that group. By reacquiring the receipts, we can contain the damage.”

“Okay. How are you going to get the receipts?”

“They’re in Biddle’s safe,” Kanezaki said. “I heard him say so on the phone.”

“It sounds like you can pick a lock, kid,” I said, “but cracking a safe is another story.”

“He won’t need to crack it,” Tatsu said. “Biddle will give him the combination.”

“What, are you going to just ask him nicely?”

Tatsu shook his head. “I thought it might be better if you would.”

I considered for a moment. I wanted another chance to question Biddle about Harry, in more private surroundings than were available last time. Especially if it was true that he and Yamaoto were somehow aligned, which increased the probability that he might have been involved in Harry’s death. Murakami and Yukiko were taken care of, but now it looked like there was still a little something I needed to wrap up.