his friend was hurt. It would have been enough to hold his hand. But now there was only darkness. “Goemon?”
“I’m here.” Daigoro could hardly hear him. Was his hearing fading like his sight, or was Katsushima that weak?
“Take . . . take them the . . .”
Those were Daigoro’s last words. Then the darkness consumed him.
BOOK SEVEN
HEISEI ERA, THE YEAR 22
(2010 CE)
30
Mariko hadn’t been to Machida in a long time. She’d forgotten how green it was out here. It was quiet, too. First she left the rattletrap drumming of the train behind her, then the traffic lights with their little droning melody. As she turned away from the larger streets and into the residential area, even the sounds of passing cars faded, until at last she was left with the rustle of leaves and the occasional barking dog.
Her own mind was far from quiet. Every aspect of her life had gone from bad to worse, all in one day. This morning she got suspended from her job. Then she was all but kidnapped by the Wind, who presumably let her go only because they knew they could take her again whenever they liked. Then came the blow that shook her down to the very core of her being. Joko Daishi attacked the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.
In the wake of Haneda and St. Luke’s, perhaps “attack” was too hyperbolic a word to describe an impromptu press conference. No one in the press was calling it that, but of course that was the point: it was designed to look like an implosion, not an outright assault.
The terrible irony was that Kusama must have invited all the reporters himself, to announce a major break in the Haneda case. Joko Daishi met the first of them right at the door where Mariko went to work every day. He declared himself the prophet of the Divine Wind, and when they asked him what he was doing at police headquarters, he said, “I do here what I am called to do everywhere: to shine a light on the truth.” He told them that the police knew a great deal more about Haneda than they were willing to share, that Captain Kusama had a devotee of the Divine Wind in his office who was intimately familiar with all of the details about the attacks, and that the reporters could interview the devotee themselves if only a police officer hadn’t shot him in the head.
The media had a field day with it. Only the stragglers thought to press Joko Daishi for answers about Haneda; all the go-getters had rushed inside, slavering to be the first to publish photos of the dead body leaking brain matter onto a decorated police captain’s carpeting. Joko Daishi just disappeared in the shuffle, leaving a few cryptic quotations behind. Somewhere along the line, some conspiracy theorist leaped to the conclusion that it was Hamaya, not Joko Daishi, who was the lead suspect on Haneda and St. Luke’s, and that his capture was to be Captain Kusama’s big announcement. Those with more journalistic integrity took the trouble to look up who Hamaya was, who his clients were, and what he’d been up to recently. That led to a screen shot from some Correctional Bureau computer—maybe hacked, maybe leaked—that quickly became the most viewed image in the country: Koji Makoto’s release forms, complete with date, time, and mug shot.
The headline of the Daily Yomiuri’s morning edition—TMPD INSIDER: JEMAAH ISLAMIYAH CONNECTION “TOTALLY BASELESS”—had been enough to get Mariko suspended. The evening edition’s headline was enough to make her sick: TOKYO’S FINEST COVER-UP: POLICE RELEASED TOP HANEDA SUSPECT HOURS BEFORE BOMBING. Mariko had advised against letting him go, then advised against withholding his name—not just advised but pleaded, forcefully enough that it cost her her rank. Now everything had gone just as Mariko said it would. Joko Daishi got exactly what he wanted: Tokyo’s top law enforcement agency was now one of the bad guys.
Mariko wished she could take comfort in having been right all along, or at least some smug satisfaction in watching Kusama get his ass kicked in front of the microphones. But when the shit hit the fan, it didn’t just splatter back on him; it smeared the whole department. She’d worked her whole career to make it into Tokyo’s most elite police unit, and now that unit was being dragged through the sewer.
It would have been healthier not to ground so much of her self-esteem in her career. She knew that. When work