today.
I remember the long train rides, on which my mother would always take my hand, literally leading me away from my father’s displeasure at the imposition of this primitive Western ritual on his impressionable young son. The church was an insidiously sensory experience: the settled, wooden smells of old paper and seat cushions; the erect pews, rigid as body casts; the glittering light of stained-glass angels; the ominous echoes of the liturgy; the bland taste of the Eucharist. All catalyzed by a dawning sense that the experience took place through a window that my father, the other half of my cultural heritage, would have preferred to keep closed.
People like to say that the West is a guilt-based culture, while that of Japan is based on shame, with the chief distinction being that the former is an internalized emotion while the latter depends on the presence of a group.
But I can tell you as the Tiresias of these two worlds that the distinction is less important than people would have you believe. Guilt is what happens when there isn’t a group to shame you. Regret, horror, atrocity: if the group doesn’t care, we simply invent a God who does. A God who might be swayed by the subsequent good acts, or at least efforts, of an erstwhile wrongdoer.
I heard tires crunching gravel, and turned toward the parking lot behind me just in time to see the first of three black sedans brake to a stop a few meters from where I was standing. The rear doors flew open and a man got out on each side. All Caucasians.
The follow-on cars stopped to the left and right of the lead; with my back to the water, I was encircled. Two more men got out of each of the additional cars. All of them were brandishing compact Berettas.
“Get in,” the one closest to me growled, gesturing to the lead car with his gun.
“I don’t think so,” I said evenly. If they were going to kill me, I’d make them do it here.
Six of them stood around me in a semicircle. If they closed in a little tighter, I could try to blast through one of the guys at the outer edge — his opposite number would be afraid to shoot, lest he hit his comrade.
But they were well disciplined and resisted the urge to close. Probably they’d been briefed on the dangers of getting too near.
Instead, one of them reached under his jacket and pulled out what I instantly recognized as a taser — a stun gun.
Which meant they wanted to take me, not kill me. I pivoted to launch myself at the nearest man, but too late. I heard the pop of the taser firing its twin electrical darts, felt them sink into my thigh, current surging through my body. I went down, jerking helplessly, willing my hand to pull out the darts but getting no response from my twitching limbs.
They let the current surge for longer than they had to, standing around me while I spasmed like a fish on a deck. Finally it stopped, but I still had no control over my limbs and couldn’t draw a breath. I felt them doing a pat- down — ankles, thighs, lower back. Hands pushed up the back of the suit jacket and I felt the Glock being taken from its holster. I waited for the pat-down to continue but it didn’t. They must have been satisfied that they had found my weapon, and searched no further — an amateur mistake that saved the flashbang, which had stayed in place.
Someone knelt on my neck and handcuffed my arms behind my back. A hood was pulled over my head. Someone else moved in and I felt them pick me up, limp as a burlap sack, and dump me onto the floor in the back of one of the cars. Then knees were pressing down on my back, doors were slamming, and the car jerked into motion.
We drove for less than five minutes. From our speed and the absence of turns, I knew we were still on National Highway 16 and that we had passed the base. During the ride I tested my fingers, wiggled my toes. Control was coming back, but my nervous system was still scrambled from the electric jolt I had received, and I felt sick to my stomach.
I felt the car slow down and turn right, heard gravel crunching beneath the tires. We stopped. Doors opened, and a pair of hands took me by each ankle and dragged me out of the car. My head smacked the bottom edge of the door on the way out and I saw stars.
They pulled me to my feet and shoved me forward. I heard footsteps all around me and knew I was surrounded. Then they were pushing me up a short flight of stairs. I heard a door open, then slam shut with a hollow aluminum bang. I was shoved into a chair and the hood was pulled off my head.
I was inside a construction trailer. Dim light came through a single sliding window. A figure sat with his back to it.
“Hi, John. It’s good to see you.” It was Holtzer, of course.
“Fuck,” I said, deliberately radiating an air of defeat and despondency. Not so hard, under the circumstances. “How did you get to me?”
“I knew you’d hear about Bulfinch, that you’d make another play for the disk. I know you’ve got sources, that you might be able to put together enough of the pieces to track me. As a precaution, we set up checkpoints around the likely staging areas near the base. You walked right into one of them.”
“Fuck,” I said again, meaning it.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You got pretty close. But you should have known you were going to come up short, John. You always do, when you’re up against me.”
“Right,” I said, trying to see how I was going to get out of this. Without the handcuffs, I might be able to get past Holtzer and the two men at the door, although I didn’t know who was still outside. With the handcuffs, I wasn’t going anywhere.
“You don’t even know what I mean by that, do you?” he went on. “Christ, you’ve always been so blind.”
“What are you talking about?”
His fleshy lips twisted into a loathsome smile and he silently mouthed four words. I couldn’t catch them at first, so he kept mouthing them until I did.
I dropped my head and fought for control. “Fuck you, Holtzer. You never had the access. It was someone on
