“All right, then, who are the Little People?”
“Again, Mr. Kawana, I don’t know anything at all about these ‘Little People’—or at least nothing more than that they appear in the book Air Chrysalis. I will tell you this, however: judging from the drift of your remarks, it seems to me that you have let something out of the bag before you yourself knew what it was all about. That can be awfully dangerous under certain circumstances. My client knows very well just how dangerous it is and what kind of danger it poses, and they have a degree of understanding regarding how to deal with the danger, which is precisely why we have tried to extend a helping hand to you. To put it quite bluntly, we have very long arms—long and strong.”
“Who is this ‘client’ you keep mentioning? Someone connected with Sakigake?”
“Unfortunately, I have not been granted the authority to divulge any names,” Ushikawa said with what sounded like genuine regret. “I can say, however, without going into detail, that they have their own very special power. Formidable power. We can stand behind you. Please understand—this is our final offer. You are free to take it or leave it. Once you make up your mind, however, there is no going back. So please think about it very carefully. And let me say this: if you are not on their side, regrettably, under certain circumstances, their long arms could, when extended, have certain undesirable—though unintended—effects on you.”
“What kind of ‘undesirable effects’?”
Ushikawa did not immediately reply to Tengo’s question. Instead, Tengo heard what sounded like the faint sucking of saliva at both sides of Ushikawa’s mouth.
“I don’t know the exact answer to that,” Ushikawa said. “They haven’t told me anything specific, which is why I am speaking in generalities.”
“So, what is it that I supposedly let out of the bag?” Tengo asked.
“I don’t know the answer to that, either,” Ushikawa said. “At the risk of repeating myself, I am nothing but a hired negotiator. By the time the full reservoir of information reaches me, it’s squeezed down to a few droplets. All I’m doing is passing on to you exactly what my client has told me to with the limited authority I have been granted. You may wonder why the client doesn’t just contact you directly, which would speed things up, and why they have to use this strange man as an intermediary, but I don’t know any better than you do.”
Ushikawa cleared his throat and waited for another question, but when there was none, he continued, “Now, Mr. Kawana, you were asking what it is that you let out of the bag, right?”
Tengo said yes, that was right.
“Well, Mr. Kawana, I’m not sure why exactly, but I can’t help wondering if it might be something for which a third party couldn’t offer a simple solution. I suspect it’s something you would need to go out on your own and work up a sweat to find out. And it could very well be that after you’ve gone through all that and reached a point where you’ve figured out the answer, it’s too late. To me, it seems obvious that you have a, uh, very special talent—a superior and beautiful talent, a talent that ordinary people do not possess. Which is precisely why your recent accomplishment carries an authority that cannot be easily overlooked. And my client appears to value that talent of yours very highly. That is why we are offering you this grant. Unfortunately, however, sheer talent is not enough. And depending upon how you look at it, possessing an outstanding talent that is not sufficient may be more dangerous than possessing nothing at all. That is my impression, however vague, of the recent matter.”
“So what you are saying, then, is that your client has sufficient knowledge and ability to tell about such things.”
“Hmm, I really can’t say about that, don’t you think? I mean, nobody can ever declare whether such qualities are ‘sufficient.’ ”
“Why do they need me?”
“If I may use the analogy of epidemic, you people may be playing the role of—pardon me—the main carriers of a disease.”
“ ‘You people?’ ” Tengo said. “Are you talking about Eriko Fukada and me?”
Ushikawa did not answer the question. “Uh, if I may use a classical analogy here, you people might have opened Pandora’s box and let loose all kinds of things in the world. This seems to be what my client thinks you’ve done, judging from my own impressions. The two of you may have joined forces by accident, but you turned out to be a far more powerful team than you ever imagined. Each of you was able to make up for what the other lacked.”
“But that’s not a crime in any legal sense.”
“That is true. It is not, of course, a, uh, crime in any legal sense, or in any this-worldly sense. If I may be allowed to quote from George Orwell’s great classic, however—or, rather, from his novel as a great source of quotations—it is very close to what he called a ‘thought crime.’ By an odd coincidence, this year just happens to be 1984. Shall we call it a stroke of fate? But I seem to have been talking a bit too much tonight, Mr. Kawana. And most of what I have been saying is nothing but my own clumsy guesswork, pure speculation, without any firm evidence to support it. Because you asked, I have given you my general impressions, that is all.”
Ushikawa fell silent, and Tengo started thinking. His “own clumsy guesswork”? How much of what this man is saying can I believe?
“Oh, well, I’ll have to be calling it a day,” Ushikawa said. “It’s such an important matter, I’ll give you a little more time. Just a little. The clock is counting off the time. Tick-tock, tick-tock, without a break. Please consider our offer carefully once more. I’ll probably be getting in touch with you again soon. Good night, then. I’m glad we had a chance to talk. I, uh, hope you will be able to sleep well, Mr. Kawana.”
Ushikawa hung up. Tengo stared at the dead receiver in his hand for a while, the way a farmer stares at a withered vegetable he has picked up from his drought-wracked field. These days, a lot of people were hanging up on Tengo.
As he had imagined, restful sleep paid Tengo no visits that night. Until the pale light of dawn began coloring the curtains and the tough city crows woke to begin their day’s work, Tengo sat on the floor, leaning against the wall and thinking about his girlfriend and about the long, strong arms reaching toward him from some unknown place. Such thoughts, however, carried him nowhere. They merely circled aimlessly around the same spot.
Tengo looked around and heaved a sigh and realized that he was absolutely alone. Ushikawa had been right. He had nothing and no one to lean on.
CHAPTER 7
Aomame
WHERE YOU ARE ABOUT TO SET FOOT
With its high ceiling and muted lighting, the capacious lobby of the Hotel Okura’s main building seemed like a huge, stylish cave. Against the cave walls, like the sighing of a disemboweled animal, bounced the muted conversations of people seated on the lobby’s sofas. The floor’s thick, soft carpeting could have been primeval moss on a far northern island. It absorbed the sound of footsteps into its endless span of accumulated time. The men and women crossing and recrossing the lobby looked like ghosts tied in place by some ancient curse, doomed to the endless repetition of their assigned roles. Men were armored in tight-fitting business suits. Slim young women were swathed in chic black dresses, here to attend a ceremony in one of the hotel’s many reception rooms. They wore small but expensive accessories, like vampire finches in search of blood, longing for a hint of light they could reflect. A large foreign couple loomed like an old king and queen past their prime, resting their tired bodies on thrones in the corner.
In this place so full of legend and suggestion, Aomame was truly out of place, with her pale blue cotton pants, simple white blouse, white sneakers, and blue Nike gym bag. She probably looked like a babysitter sent by her agency to work for a hotel guest, she thought, as she killed time sitting in a big easy chair. Oh well, I’m not here for socializing. Sitting there, she sensed that someone was watching her, but, try as she might to scan the area, she could not find anyone who seemed to be focused on her. Never mind, she told hers
elf. Let them look all they want.
When the hands of her watch hit 6:50, Aomame stood up and went to the ladies’ room, carrying her gym bag. She washed her hands with soap and water and checked once more to make sure there were no problems with her appearance. Then, facing the large, clear mirror, she took several deep breaths. This was a spacious restroom, and she was the only one in it. It might be even bigger than her whole apartment. “This is going to be my last job,” she said in a low voice to the mirror. Once I carry this off, I disappear. Poof! Like a ghost. I’m here now, but not tomorrow. In a few days, I’ll have a different name and a different face.
She returned to the lobby and took her seat again, setting the gym bag on the table next to her. In the bag was a small automatic pistol with seven bullets and a sharp needle made for thrusting into the back of a man’s neck. I’ve got to calm down, she told herself. This job is important, and it’s my last. I have to be the usual cool, tough Aomame.
But she could not shake off the awareness that she was not in a normal state. Her breathing was strangely labored, and the heightened speed of her heartbeat concerned her. A film of sweat moistened her armpits. Her skin was tingling. I’m not just tense, though. I’m having a premonition of something. And the premonition is giving me a warning. It keeps knocking on the door of my mind. It’s telling me, “It’s still not too late. Get out of here now and forget all this.”
Aomame wanted to heed the warning if she could, abandon everything and turn her back on this hotel lobby. There was something ominous here, the lingering presence of circuitous death—a slow, quiet, but inescapable death. But I can’t just run away with my tail between my legs. That’s not the Aomame way to live.
It was a long ten minutes. Time refused to move ahead. She stayed on the sofa, trying to get her breathing under control. The lobby ghosts kept spouting their hollow reverberations. People drifted silently over the thick carpet like souls groping for their eternal resting places. The only actual noise to reach her ears now and then was the clinking of a coffee set on a tray whenever a waitress passed by. But even that sound contained a dubious secondary sound within it. Things were not heading in a good direction. If I’m already this tense, I won’t be able to do a thing when the time comes. Aomame closed her eyes and almost by reflex intoned a prayer, the one that she had been taught to recite before every meal from as long ago as she could remember. That had been a long, long time ago, but she remembered every word with perfect clarity—
O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow Thy blessings upon our humble pathways. Amen.
However grudgingly, Aomame had to admit that this prayer, which had given her nothing but pain in the past, now provided a source of support. The sound of the words calmed her nerves, stopped her fears at the doorway, and helped her breathing to quiet down. She pressed her fingers against her eyelids and repeated the prayer to herself over and over.
. . .
“Miss Aomame, I believe,” a man said close by. It was the voice of a young man.
Aomame opened her eyes, slowly raised her head, and looked at the owner of the voice. Two young men were standing in front of her. Both wore the same kind of dark suit. Judging by the fabric and cut, these were not expensive clothes—probably bought right off the rack at a discount store. They didn’t quite fit in every detail, but they were admirably free of wrinkles. Perhaps the men pressed them every time they put them on. Neither man wore a tie. One had his white shirt buttoned all the way to the top, while the other wore a kind of gray crew-neck shirt under his suit jacket. They had on the plainest black shoes possible.
The man in the white shirt must have been a good six feet tall, and he wore his hair in a ponytail. He had long eyebrows, the ends of which turned up at a distinct angle like a line graph. His face was serene, with well-balanced features that could have belonged to an actor. The other man must have been five foot five and had a buzz cut and a snub nose. A tiny beard grew at the tip of his chin like a mistakenly applied shadow, and there was a small scar by his right eye. Both men were slim, with sunken cheeks and tanned faces. There was not an ounce of fat to be seen on either of them, and judging from the spread of their suits’ shoulders there were some serious muscles underneath. They were probably in their mid- to late twenties. The look in their eyes was deep and sharp, and the eyeballs moved no more than necessary, as with animals on the hunt.
As if by reflex, Aomame stood up from her chair and looked at her watch. The hands pointed to seven o’clock exactly. Right on time.
“Yes, I am Aomame.”
Neither man displayed any expression. They did a swift examination of Aomame’s attire and looked at the blue gym bag next to her.
“Is this all you brought with you?” Buzzcut asked.
“Yes, this is it,” Aomame said.
“That’s fine. Let’s go, then. Are you ready?” Buzzcut asked. Ponytail said nothing as he kept his eyes on Aomame.
“Yes, of course,” Aomame said. She guessed that the shorter man was somewhat older than the other one and the leader of the two.
Buzzcut went ahead with leisurely steps, crossing the lobby toward the elevators. Aomame followed him, gym bag in hand. Ponytail followed about six feet behind her. This meant she was sandwiched between them. They know what they’re doing, she thought. They walked with erect posture, their gait strong and precise. The dowager had said they both practiced karate. Aomame knew from her martial arts training that in a face-to-face confrontation with these two, there was probably no way she could win. But she did not sense from these men the kind of overpowering menace that Tamaru projected. Defeating them was not entirely out of the question. The first thing she would have to do in hand-to-hand combat would be to render Buzzcut powerless. He called the shots. If Ponytail was her only opponent, she could manage to survive and escape.
The three of them boarded the elevator, and Ponytail pushed the button for the seventh floor. Buzzcut stood next to Aomame, and Ponytail stood in the corner, facing them at an angle. They did all this wordlessly, systematically, like a second baseman and shortstop who live to make double plays.
In the midst of such thoughts, it suddenly dawned on Aomame that her breathing and heartbeat had returned to their normal rhythms. Nothing to worry about, she thought. I’m my usual self—the cool, tough Aomame. Everything will probably go well. No more bad premonitions.
The elevator door opened soundlessly. Ponytail kept the “Door Open” button depressed while Buzzcut stepped out followed by Aomame, and then he released the button and left the elevator. Buzzcut led the way down the corridor, Aomame followed, and Ponytail continued playing rear guard. The broad corridor was totally deserted: perfectly silent and perfectly clean, well cared for in every detail, befitting a first-class hotel—no trays of used room-service dishes parked in front of doors, no cigarette butts in the ashtray outside the elevator, the fragrance of fresh-cut flowers wafting from well-placed vases. They turned several corners and came to a stop in front of a door. Ponytail knocked twice and then, without waiting for an answer, opened the door with a key card. He stepped inside, looked around to make sure there was nothing wrong, and gave Buzzcut a curt nod.
“Please,” Buzzcut said to Aomame drily.
Aomame walked in. Buzzcut came in after her and closed the door, locking it from the inside with a chain. The room was a big one. No ordinary hotel room, it was outfitted with a large set of reception-room furniture and an office desk. The television set and refrigerator were also full-size. This was clearly the living area of a special suite. The window provided a sweeping view of Tokyo at night. It had to be an expensive room. Buzzcut checked his watch and urged Aomame to sit on the sofa. She did as she was told and set her blue gym bag next to her.
“Will you be changing clothes?” Buzzcut asked.
“If possible,” Aomame said. “I’d prefer to change into workout clothes.”
Buzzcut nodded. “First we’ll have to do a search, if you don’t mind. Sorry, but it’s part of our job.”
“That’s fine, search all you want,” Aomame said. There was no hint of tension in her voice. If anything, there was a perceptible touch of amusement at their neurotic attention to detail.
Ponytail came over to Aomame and did a body search to make sure she was not carrying anything suspicious. All she had on was a pair of thin cotton pants and a blouse; it didn’t take a search to know there could be nothing hidden under those. He was just going through the motions. His hands seemed tense and stiff. It would have been hard to compliment him on his skill at this. He probably had little experience at doing body searches on women. Buzzcut watched him work, leaning against the desk.
When the body search was over, Aomame opened her gym bag for him. Inside were a thin summer cardigan, a matching jersey top and bottom for work, and two towels, one large and one small. A simple makeup set and a paperback. There was a small beaded purse containing a wallet, a change purse, and a key ring. Aomame handed each item to Ponytail. Finally she took out a black vinyl pouch and unzipped it. Inside was a change of underwear and a few tampons and sanitary napkins.
“I sweat when I work, so I need to have a change of clothes,” Aomame said. She took out matching lace-trimmed bra and panties and started to spread them out for Ponytail to see. He blushed slightly and gave several quick nods as if to say, “All right, I’ve seen enough.” Aomame began to suspect that this man could not speak at all.