Barry Eisler - Hard Rain

“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

“I can help you set it up-” Kanezaki started to say.

“No,” I said, shaking my head, already picturing how I would handle it. “I can take care of that myself. You just make sure you have access to Biddle’s office when I tell you to.”

“Okay,” he said.

I looked at him. “Why are you doing all this? If the CIA finds out, they’ll call you a traitor.”

He laughed. “It’s hard to be scared of something like that immediately after finding out that your boss has been trying to hire someone to have you killed. Besides, Crepuscular was officially shut down, remember? As far as I’m concerned, Biddle is the traitor. I’m just trying to straighten things out.”

Tatsu took me to a doctor he knew, a guy named Eto. Tatsu told me he had done this guy a favor many years earlier, that as a result he was in Tatsu’s debt and could be counted on for his discretion.

Eto didn’t ask any questions. He examined my arm and told me I had a fractured ulna. He set it, put a cast on it, and gave me a prescription for a codeine-based painkiller. The prescription was written on generic Jikei Hospital stationery. I looked at the signature and saw that it was illegible. No one would be able to trace it back to him.

I called Biddle afterward. Told him I was ready to take him up on his offer about Kanezaki. Arranged a meeting for ten o’clock that night to discuss details.

I went to another spy shop in Shinjuku. This time I bought a pair of high-resolution night-vision goggles with a binocular magnification function. I also picked up another ASP baton. I’d developed a certain fondness for the things.

Next I stopped at a sporting goods store and bought a pair of sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt, both in a flat black heavy cotton, and a pair of jogging shoes. It was hard to find the right footwear-almost everything the store had was multicolored and gaudy-but eventually I came upon a pair that was suitably dark. After I left the store I cut off the reflective strips that the manufacturer had thoughtfully placed across the heels to make joggers more visible at night. Getting hit by a car that might fail to see me wasn’t my primary concern.

I had told Biddle that he should enter the Aoyama Bochi cemetery complex on Kayanoki-dori, from the Omotesando-dori entrance. That he should walk down the path about fifty meters, at which point he would see a tall obelisk on the left, the tallest structure in the cemetery. That he should wait there.

At eight o’clock, when it was sufficiently dark, I slipped into the cemetery from the Gaiennishi-dori side, avoiding the regular entrances just in case anyone was prepositioned and waiting for me. An odd place for a jog, but not unheard of. As soon as I was inside, I pulled on the goggles. I could make out every marker and bush in bright green. I saw bats sailing among the trees, a cat slinking from behind a stone.

I set up near the obelisk, inside a memorial shaped like a triple pagoda. The pagoda offered me excellent concealment and a three-hundred-sixty-degree vantage point.

Biddle showed up at ten sharp. He was as punctual about spycraft as he was about his tea.

I watched him make his way to the obelisk. He was wearing an open trench coat, a suit and tie beneath it. Very cloak and dagger. For ten minutes I scanned the perimeter of the cemetery, using the goggles as night-vision binoculars, until I was satisfied he was alone. Then I eased out and made my way to where he was standing.

He didn’t hear me until I spoke from a meter away. “Biddle,” I said.

“Jesus!” he said, jumping and spinning to face me.

I could see him squinting in the darkness. In the white/green of the goggles, I logged every detail of his expression.

Harry’s detector was motionless in my pocket. With my good arm, I slipped the baton out from one of the sweatpants pockets. Biddle missed the movement in the dark.

“There’s a small problem,” I said.

“What?”

“I need you to do a better job convincing me that you had nothing to do with Haruyoshi Fukasawa’s death.”

I saw his brow furrow in the green glow. “Look, I already told you…,” he started to say.

I snapped the baton out and backhanded it into his forward shin, holding back a little at the end because it was too soon to break anything. He shrieked and fell to the ground, clutching his wounded leg. I gave him a minute to roll around while I scanned the area. Except for Biddle, all was silent.

“No more noise,” I told him. “Stay quiet, or I’ll make you quiet.”

He gritted his teeth and looked to where my voice had come from. “Goddamn it, I’ve told you everything I know,” he said, gasping.

“You didn’t tell me you’re working with Yamaoto. That the one who’s been keeping Crepuscular alive is you, not Kanezaki.”

His eyes were wide, searching for me in the darkness. “Kanezaki is paying you, isn’t he?” he groaned.

I considered for a moment. “No. No one’s paying me. For once, I’m doing something just because I want to. Although I wouldn’t call that good news, from your perspective.”

“Well, I can pay you. The Agency can. It’s a new world we’re in, and I told you we want you to be a part of it.”

I chuckled. “You sound like a recruiting billboard. Now tell me about Yamaoto.”

“I’m serious. Post Nine-Eleven, the Agency needs people like you. This is why we’ve been looking for you.”

“I’m going to ask my question again. For free. If I have to repeat myself after this, though, the shot that just put you on the ground is going to seem like a caress.”

There was a long pause, then he said, “All right.” He got slowly to his feet, keeping his weight off his injured leg. “Look, Yamaoto has his interests, and we have ours. There’s just an alignment right now, that’s all. An alliance of convenience.”

“To what end? I thought Crepuscular was supposed to help reformers here.”

He nodded. “Reform would be good for the U.S. in the long term, but it would also create problems. Look, Japan is the world’s largest creditor. It has over three hundred billion dollars invested in U.S. treasury bills alone. In the short term, real reform would mean Japanese bank closings, bank closings would mean bank runs, and bank runs would force banks to repatriate their overseas capital to cover fleeing depositors. If reforms eventually work, though, and the economy improves, yen-based holdings will become more attractive, and Japanese banks will move their dollar-and Euro-based holdings home, where they might earn a better return.”

He had pulled himself together pretty nicely. Maybe I hadn’t been giving him enough credit.

“So whoever’s calling the shots in the USG right now prefers the status quo,” I said.

“We like to refer to it as ‘stability,” ’ he said, putting some weight on his injured leg and wincing.

I scanned the area around us. All quiet. “Because the status quo keeps all those trillions of yen safely parked in the U.S., where they prop up the American economy.”

“That’s right. To put it crudely, America is addicted to a continuing influx of foreign capital to support its deficit spending, and it gets the balance of its fix from Japan. There are elements in the USG that don’t want that to change.”

I shook my head. “That’s not crude, it’s nicely put. America is addicted to cheap oil, and props up brutal regimes in the Middle East to feed its habit. If the USG is supporting corrupt elements in Japan because those elements guarantee continued access to Japanese capital, Uncle Sam is just being consistent.”

“I suppose that’s not unfair. But I don’t make policy. I just carry it out.”