Five meters. The Japanese guy reached out for the American, the gesture urgent even through my adrenalized slow-motion vision. He grabbed the American’s arm and started pulling on it.

Three meters. The American looked up and saw me. The cigarette dangled from his lips. There was no recognition in his eyes.

Two meters. I stepped in and flung the cup forward. Its contents of ninety-eight degrees centigrade Earl Grey tea exited and caught the American directly in the face and neck. His hands flew up and he shrieked.

I turned to the Japanese. His eyes were popped all the way open, his head rotating back and forth in the universal gestures of negation. He started to raise his hands as though to ward me off.

I grabbed his shoulders and shoved him into the wall. Using the same forward momentum, I stepped in and kneed him squarely in the balls. He grunted and doubled over.

I turned back to the American. He was bent forward, staggering, his hands clutching at his face. I grabbed the collar of his jacket and the back of his trousers and accelerated him headfirst into the wall like a matador with a bull. His body shuddered from the impact and he dropped to the ground.

The Japanese guy was lying on his side, clutching his crotch, gasping. I hauled him up by the lapels and shoved his back against the wall. I looked left, then right. It was just the three of us.

“Tell me who you are,” I said in Japanese.

He made retching noises. I could see he was going to need a minute.

Keeping my left hand pressed against his throat, I patted him down to confirm that he didn’t have a weapon, then checked his ears and jacket to ensure that he wasn’t wired for sound. He was clean. I reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a wallet. I flipped it open. The ID was right in front, in a slip-in laminated protector.

Tomohisa Kanezaki. Second Secretary, Consular Affairs, U.S. Embassy. The bald eagle logo of the U.S. Department of State showed blue and yellow in the background.

So these characters were with the CIA. I slipped the wallet into one of my pants pockets so I could examine its contents later at my leisure.

“Pull yourself together, Kanezaki-san,” I said, switching to English. “Or this time I’ll hurt you for real.”

“Chotto matte, chotto matte,” he panted, holding up one of his hands for emphasis. Wait a minute, wait a minute. “Setsumei suru to yakusoku shimasu kara.. .” I promise I’ll explain everything, but…

His Japanese was American-accented. “Use English,” I told him. “I don’t have time to give you a language lesson.”

“Okay, all right,” he said. The panting had slowed a little. “My name is Tomohisa Kanezaki. I’m with the U.S. Embassy here in Tokyo.”

“I know who you are. I just looked at your wallet. What were you doing following that man?”

He took a deep breath and grimaced. His eyes were watering from the ball shot. “We were trying to find you. You’re John Rain.”

“You were trying to find me, why?”

“I don’t know. The parameters I was given…”

I shoved hard against his throat and got in his face. “I’m not interested in your parameters. Ignorance is not going to be bliss for you. Not tonight. Understand?”

He tried to push me away. “Just let me fucking talk for a minute, okay? If you keep choking me, I’m not going to be able to tell you anything!”

I was taken aback by his gumption. He sounded more petulant than afraid. I realized this kid didn’t understand the kind of trouble he was in. If he didn’t tell me what I wanted to know I would have to adjust his attitude.

I shot a quick glance at his prone friend, then back at him. “Talk fast,” I told him.

“I was only supposed to locate you. I was explicitly told not to make contact.”

“What was supposed to happen after you located me?”

“My superiors would take it up from there.”

“But you know who I am.”

“I told you, yes.”

I nodded. “Then you know what I’m going to do to you if I find any of your answers unsatisfactory.”

He blanched. I seemed to be getting through to him.

“Who’s he?” I asked, gesturing with my head to the prone American.

“Diplomatic security. The parameters… I was told that under no circumstances was I to take a chance on encountering you alone.”

A bodyguard. Sounded possible. The guy hadn’t recognized me, I’d seen that. He was probably here just for protection and surveillance tag team.

Or he could have been the triggerman. The Agency relies on contractor cutouts for its wetwork, people like me. He might have been one of them.

“You’re not supposed to encounter me alone because…,” I said.

“Because you’re dangerous. We have a dossier on you.”

The one Holtzer would have put together. Right.

“The man you were following,” I said. “Tell me about that.”

He nodded. “His name is Haruyoshi Fukasawa. He’s your only known associate. We were following him to get to you.”

“That’s not enough.”

He gave me a cold stare, looking like he was prepared to tough things out. “That’s all I know.”

His partner groaned and started to pull himself up onto his knees. Kanezaki glanced at him, and I knew what he was thinking: If his partner recovered, I would have a hard time controlling the two of them.

“You’re not telling me what you know, Kanezaki,” I said. “Let me show you something.”

I took a step over to his partner, who was now facing us on all fours, grunting something unintelligible. I bent down, took hold of his chin with one hand and the side of his head with the other, and gave a sudden, decisive twist. His neck snapped with a loud crack and he flopped to the ground.

I let go of his head and stepped back to Kanezaki. His eyes were bulging, shifting from me to the corpse and back again. “Oh my fucking God!” he spluttered. “Oh my God!”

“First time you’ve seen something like that?” I asked, my tone deliberately casual. “It gets easier as you go along. Of course, in your case, the next time you see it, it’s going to be happening to you.”

His face was white and getting whiter, and I wondered for a moment if there was some danger that he might faint. I needed to help him focus.

“Kanezaki. You were telling me about Haruyoshi Fukasawa. About how you knew that he’s an associate of mine. Keep going, please.”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “We knew… we knew he was connected to you because we intercepted a letter.”

“A letter?”

His eyes opened. “From him to Midori Kawamura, in New York. Mentioning you.”

Goddamn it, I thought, at the mention of her name. I just couldn’t get clear of these people. They were like cancer. You think you’ve cut it out, it always comes back.

And spreads, to the people around you.

“Keep going,” I said, scowling.

“Jesus Christ, I’m telling you that’s all I know!”

If he panicked completely, I wouldn’t get anything useful. The trick was to keep him scared, but not so scared that he began to make things up just to please me.

“All right,” I told him. “That’s all you know about how. But you still haven’t told me about why. Why you were trying to find me.”

“Look, you know I can’t talk about…”

I seized his throat hard. His eyes bulged. He snaked one arm between mine and tried to lever my grip open. It looked like something he might have picked up in one of the Agency’s weekend personal security courses. Kudos to him for remembering it under pressure. Too bad it didn’t work.

“Kanezaki,” I said, loosening the grip enough so he could breathe, “in one minute you will either go on living or someone will find you next to your friend there. Which it is depends entirely on what you say to me in that minute. Now start talking.”

I felt him swallow beneath the pressure from my hand.

“All right, all right,” he said. He was talking fast now. “For ten years the USG has been pressuring Japan to reform its banks and get its finances in order. For ten years things have only gotten worse. The economy is beginning to collapse now. If the collapse continues, Japan will be the first domino to fall. Southeast Asia, Europe, and America will be next. The country has to reform. But the vested interests are so deeply entrenched that reform is impossible.”