creeping up over the curbstones, the trees swaying in the slight breeze, their leaves on the verge of autumn.
Kanezaki had a lot of explaining to do at headquarters, but I imagined he would not only survive it, but turn it to his advantage. He was becoming increasingly formidable, and I couldn’t help feeling some pride in his development. He’d acquitted himself well at the granary, and, for all I knew, his determination had saved my life. Certainly it had saved me the unpleasant task of rushing the guy behind the truck. I told him how well he’d done, and asked him how he was feeling.
“A little bit…shocked,” he said. “Numb. I wasn’t really thinking. I didn’t know what happened at first. I got knocked down, and then I got up, and I just…shot him.”
I smiled. “They say you can’t keep a good man down.”
He looked a little sheepish. “I don’t know how to feel about it.”
“Different people feel different ways. In a few days, you might find yourself upset. You might not feel anything at all, other than satisfaction and relief that you put him away before he did you. Either way, if you want to talk to someone who knows a little about these things, get in touch, okay?”
He nodded. “Thanks for that.”
“And pass along my thanks to your sister for getting us out of the hotel in D.C. She was really something.”
“I will,” he said. “She asked after you, by the way. She’s settled down since we were kids, and I think she’s happy, but I guess deep inside, she’s still got a thing for bad boys.”
I laughed. “What’s her story, anyway?”
He blew out a breath. “That’s a long one. I’ll tell you another time.”
The way he said goodbye, making sure everyone knew how to contact him, I knew what he was thinking. He had himself a clandestine collection of ice-cold killers. With that, plus his intelligence reach, who knew how much he could accomplish?
I thought about disabusing him. But then I thought about how many ops he’d dragged me into over the years, and decided it was foolish to tempt fate.
Dox went to his place in Bali. Said he wanted to kick back for a while and enjoy his ill-gotten loot.
“You’re not going to call Kei, are you?” I asked him as we said goodbye.
I thought he was going to deny even considering it, or maybe deflect me with a joke. Instead, he said, “There was something special about her, partner. There really was. But no, I’m not going to call her. It would be wrong.”
“Yeah,” I said, respecting his regret and his resignation. “It would be.”
“What about you? You fixing to go to Virginia and pay your last respects to Horton?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Because he tried to set us up?”
“Yes.”
“Well, ordinarily in a situation like this, I’d say hell yes, let’s take care of business. But this time…”
“You’re thinking about his daughter?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I think we made her suffer enough. I really hate the idea of taking her daddy away from her. But also…I don’t know. I just feel like, what’s the point? We got a good outcome. Plus, what if he really is trying to set things right in the corridors of power and such?”
“That’s exactly what he wants us to wonder.”
“What if it’s true?”
I was still ambivalent. “Larison might have ideas of his own, you know.”
“I’ll let Larison worry about Larison. I only worry about you. Besides, I think he’s going to leave old Horton alone.”
I wondered about that. “Why?”
“Just a feeling. He got his diamonds back, didn’t he? I don’t think revenge is going to be a huge priority for him, even if he’d never admit that, even to himself.”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
“I guess we will. You did a nice job, Mister Rain, as head of our little band of brothers. I wasn’t sure you had it in you.”
I laughed. “I don’t know about that. How many times did we almost blow each other’s brains out? Which we would have at least once, if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Well, I won’t deny doing a hell of a Cleavon Little impersonation just when it was called for. But think of it this way. With someone else in charge of this crew, we wouldn’t have almost blown each other’s brains out. We would have done it.”
I thought he was giving me too much credit, but I didn’t say anything one way or the other.
“Okay, Mister Modest,” he said, “time to go. Try not to miss me too much, okay?”
“I’ll try.”
“Hell, come on out to Bali. Now that you’re single again, you can enjoy my island properly. I know all the best spots and the prettiest ladies. Unless you think you’re going to crawl back to Delilah.”
I laughed to cover my confusion and told him I’d see him in Bali. That much, at least, I was sure of.
It was a little awkward with Treven. He was still active-duty military, and he didn’t say where he was going. I had the feeling the life wasn’t for him, but that neither was retirement, not even with a tax-free twenty-five million. I thought maybe he was just someone who needed a structure, and a direction, like a train needs a set of tracks.
I still wondered for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate whether he might have been working both sides of the op at one point. Maybe it was that he didn’t kill Horton when he could have. At the time, I couldn’t fault his reasoning, but I also suspected reason wasn’t the real basis for his reluctance. I sensed the presence of some kind of attachment there, something between him and Horton. Or maybe what I sensed was just Treven trying to cling to that structure I thought he needed, a structure that had always given him purpose but that events were peeling away from him. Maybe the fear of losing that structure had caused him to reach out to Horton at some point, to try to play both sides against the middle. But I supposed it didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but a part of me was glad I would probably never know. I didn’t want to have to do something about it. It was easier to let it go.
Larison was also sketchy about his next moves, and I assumed he was going to his lover. I hoped it would work out for him. My own attempt at romance with a civilian had resulted in the civilian in question trying to have me killed. And she was the mother of my child. Of course, I said nothing to him, neither about his personal life nor about Horton.
He thanked me when we said goodbye, and I wasn’t sure for what-for keeping his secret; for keeping him from walking away from us in a way he would have regretted; for taking the chance I had taken in trusting him.
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “It was all just self-preservation.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “I owe you.”
“Owe me what? You brought me in on an op that made me twenty-five million.”
He didn’t answer right away, and I realized he was thinking his original plan hadn’t involved my keeping the diamonds. And that his recollection of whatever he’d originally planned must have been producing uncharacteristic stirrings of conscience. I thought I’d been lucky things had worked out as they had. It could easily have gone another way.
“I don’t know where I’ll be, exactly,” he said. “But if you need me, I’ll have your back.”
Coming from Larison, an offer like that would be as rare as it was meaningful. I appreciated it, and I told him so. I had a feeling I’d see him again, and I told him that, too.
And so our detachment dissolved. For a time, anyway.
I went back to Tokyo, of course, as I always seem to, like a salmon swimming upriver to the spot where it was born. I settled in, and enjoyed the feeling of a lull in my life. The city continued to recover steadily from the trauma of the earthquake and tsunami, and I gave an impossibly large and appropriately anonymous amount to relief efforts in the north. Revelations about the corruption that led to the Fukushima reactor meltdown were astonishing, even for a cynic like me. Still, nothing seemed to come of it. Japan, it seemed, at least in terms of apathy, was not so different from America.
