Flashback

“Here’s the complicated part of this whole scenario,” Nick said into the thickened silence. He pointed at Hiroshi Nakamura. “It wasn’t enough for your family and the families of Munetaka, Morikune, Omura, Toyoda, Yoritsugo, Yamahsita, and Yoshiake just to take all of modern Japan back to feudal days to prepare yourselves for this holy war with Islam. You couldn’t just draw the line at rebuilding the old feudal system from Japan’s own Middle Ages—turning keiretsu into clan-run, government-ruling zaibatsu and industrialists into daimyo s— it wasn’t enough just to bring back the feudal realities of Shogun and samurai and ronin and a resurgence of the code of bushido— no, you superdaimyo heads of the uberzaibatsu, you had to bring back feudal ways of assuring the allegiance of your vassals, including your vassal- daimyos.”

Nick paused and looked up at the still-glowing red eye of the video camera, then back at Nakamura.

“Hiroshi Nakamura had a problem with one of his vassal-daimyos becoming too popular with the people and with Nakamura’s own soldiers as a warrior-prince in China. Your daimyo’s loyalty was never in question, Mr. Nakamura—you knew he’d die for you or commit seppuku if you demanded it—but such popularity in an underling is a dangerous thing all by itself. So you—and Yoritsugo, Yamahsita, Yoshiake, Morikune, Omura, Munetaka, and Toyoda—began doing the same thing Japanese liege lords and their liege-lord counterparts in Europe’s Middle Ages did as insurance for such loyalty…

“You took the popular warrior-daimyo’s child as a sort of hostage. Not the two grown sons of this popular daimyo by his real wife—one of those sons had already died in battle in China and another soon would—but, rather, this daimyo’s beloved daughter by his American-born courtesan.

“Thus Kumiko Catherine Catton—who we were told was a sex worker named Keli Bracque—entered your household. She was not treated as a prisoner, Mr. Nakamura. Just as in feudal Europe during the Middle Ages, you raised Kumiko as if she were an honored member of your own family.

“But the unthinkable happened. Kumiko Catherine Catton fell in love with your only son. When Keigo came to the United States to shoot his documentary, fourteen months before you were appointed Advisor by your emperor —before you arranged to be appointed as a Federal Advisor in Colorado—Kumiko, aka Keli Bracque, came with him. She wasn’t Keigo’s sex toy. They were passionately in love.”

Nick paused.

Nakamura cleared his throat and said softly, “May I ask how you came by this information, Mr. Bottom?”

“You hired me to find it,” said Nick. “But I didn’t. I never would have followed up on Ms. Keli Bracque’s background. I was too stupid.

“But Keli—Kumiko—became alarmed for her beloved Keigo Nakamura’s safety. Your wastrel son was pretty bright after all, wasn’t he, Mr. Nakamura? Thrown out of Tokyo University, but not because he was stupid… because he was a born rebel. In the States, we have the expression The squeaky wheel gets the grease. In Japan, you say The nail that stands up gets hammered down.

“Well, Mr. Nakamura, I don’t have to tell you that Keigo was the nail that stood up. He was a rebel in a society devoted as never before to blind obedience. The video documentary he was shooting wasn’t about how pathetic Americans were for getting hooked on the drug flashback… it was about where flashback had come from, Japan. And it was about the damage that the deliberate and premeditated introduction of this addictive drug had done to human beings here who used it—from pathetic Israeli survivors of the Second Holocaust to hopeless inner-city blacks to suburban housewives.”

“Prove it, Mr. Bottom,” said Nakamura.

Nick did not smile. “I don’t have to. I’ve seen several hours of his footage, Mr. Nakamura. And pretty soon, so will millions of other Americans. Keigo Nakamura will show the damage you and the other Japanese warlords have done to this nation.”

Nakamura said nothing.

“Kumiko Catherine Catton didn’t give a damn about any of the politics of the issue,” said Nick. “She just was afraid that someone would whack her beloved Keigo. Like her mother, Kumiko had grown up in Japan—had seen the changes there in the past twenty years. She knew that the daimyos weren’t going to allow Keigo to show and distribute his quixotic documentary. She knew that someone would stop Keigo… and stop him hard.

“So in Kumiko’s naivete—she was still more used to the way things worked in Japan than in her mother’s birthplace of the United States—she went to local officials for help. Her thinking was that if the shocking information behind Keigo’s little movie went public first, there’d be no reason for the daimyos to harm the boy.

“Kumiko went to Denver’s district attorney—an ambitious but moronic political appointee named Mannie Ortega. Not even understanding what the girl was offering to give him, Ortega handed it off to a mere assistant district attorney—a poor, hardworking but unlucky sonofabitch named Harvey Cohen—who, with his assistant, my wife, Dara, began interviewing Keli Bracque, aka Kumiko Catherine Catton, and just what they learned about the origins of flashback was astounding.

“Ortega was an idiot, but Harvey and Dara knew what they were dealing with. They insisted, over Mannie Ortega’s insistence that it was no big deal, that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security be brought in.

“Both the FBI and DHS were brought in. They carried out their own ‘complete investigations.’ Then they assured District Attorney Ortega, Assistant District Attorney Cohen, and Cohen’s research assistant, Dara Fox Bottom, that Keli Bracque was a stone liar, that the girl was indeed an ambitious sex worker and a drug addict—heroin—and that there was no such person as Kumiko Catherine Catton.

“The FBI and Homeland Security told Mannie, Harvey, and Dara that this kind of hysteria could hurt American-Japanese relations at a time when we depended on Japan and would personally insult the soon-to-be Federal Advisor to Colorado and the southwestern states, Hiroshi Nakamura. These federal agencies recommended—strongly recommended—that the investigation into this crazy woman’s allegations be shut down immediately and that all interviews and records be destroyed.

“So Ortega immediately terminated the investigation, burned and wiped all the files he had, and ordered Harvey and Dara to do the same.

“But my wife and her hapless boss were stubborn. They continued meeting secretly with Kumiko Catherine Catton—and began discussions with Keigo Nakamura himself, foolishly promising him safety in the Witness Protection Program—right up to the time of Keigo’s and Kumiko’s murder in October six years ago.

“Even after those murders, Harvey and Dara kept hardcopy and computer files in a room they rented, using Harvey’s own personal credit card—and he couldn’t afford it—at a motel here in Denver. Their plan was to turn the information over to the Attorney General of the United States, with duplicate copies to all the AGs in forty-four states.

“Right up to the day of their deaths—their murders—more than three months after the execution of Keigo and Kumiko, Harvey and Dara didn’t understand what they had. Dara tried to tell me—tried to lead me toward the real killers in my own investigation—but she knew that if she revealed the secrets she and Harvey had been sitting on, I’d lose my job. A job I loved. And the truth is—she never really did figure out who’d killed her friend Kumiko and the billionaire’s son, Keigo.”

Nick paused. He hadn’t spoken this much for this long in more than six years. His throat was sore.

“She and her boss Harvey never understood how big the whole thing was,” he rasped at last. “They thought it was just a revelation about who invented and distributed flashback. They didn’t see that it was really about the future of who controlled this country. That it was really about power.”

He stopped.

Hiroshi Nakamura sat far back in the plush leather chair behind the big desk. He steepled his fingers, looked at Hideki Sato, looked back at Nick, and smiled. His voice was purr-soft.

“You still haven’t told us who the murder or murderers were, Detective Bottom.”

Exhausted, Nick leaned on the back of the chair they’d given him. He looked Nakamura in the eye.