Hotel.”
“Fuck!” I said, momentarily forgetting myself.
“Yes.”
“Damn it! Did he have it with him when he was killed?”
Outside the Akasaka Tokyu — a hundred meters from where I gave it to him. “What time did it happen?” I asked.
“Early afternoon. Maybe two o’clock. Did he have it with him?”
“Almost certainly,” I told him.
His shoulders slumped, and I knew he wasn’t playacting.
“Damn it, Tatsu. How do you know about the disk?”
There was a long pause before he answered. “Because Kawamura was supposed to give the disk to me.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise.
“Yes,” he went on, “I had been developing Kawamura for quite some time. I had strongly encouraged him to provide me with 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
