Opposite the couch was a Bang & Olufsen home theater with a six-CD changer. Next to it, a bookshelf containing an extensive collection of CDs, most of them jazz, and my modest library. The library includes a number of books on the bugei, or warrior arts, some of them quite old and obscure, containing information on combat techniques thought to be too dangerous for modern judo-spine locks, neck cranks, and the like-techniques that are, consequently, largely lost to the art. There are also some well-thumbed works of philosophy-Mishima, Musashi, Nietzsche. And there are a number of slim volumes that I order from time to time from some unusual publishers in the States, volumes that are illegal in Japan and in other countries lacking America’s perhaps overly strong devotion to freedom of speech, but which I manage to acquire nonetheless through techniques garnered from some of the volumes themselves. There are works on the latest surveillance methods and technologies; police investigative techniques and forensic science; acquiring forged identity; setting up offshore accounts and mail drops; methods of disguise and evasion; lock-picking and breaking and entry; and related topics. Of course, over the years I have developed my own substantial expertise in all these areas, but I have no plan to write a how-to account of my experiences. Instead, I read these books to learn what the opposition knows, to understand how the people I might be up against think, to predict where they might come after me, to take the appropriate countermeasures.

The only conspicuous item in the apartment was a wooden wing-chun training dummy, about the dimensions of a large man, which I had placed in the center of the apartment’s lone tatami room. Had the apartment been occupied by a family, this might have been the location of the kotatsu, a low table with a heavy quilted skirt draping to the floor and an electric brazier underneath, around which the family would nestle in the winter, their shoeless feet warmed by the brazier, their legs tucked comfortably under the quilted skirt, as they gossiped about the neighbors, examined the household bills, perhaps planned for the children’s future.

But the wooden dummy represented a better use for me. I’d been training in judo for almost the quarter century I’d been in Japan, and loved the art’s emphasis on throws and ground fighting. But once Holtzer and the Agency had connected me to the Kodokan judo center in Tokyo, I knew joining the Osaka branch would have been too obvious a move, like a recent entrant to the federal witness protection program resubscribing to the same obscure magazines he’d always enjoyed before moving underground. For now, I felt safer training alone. The dummy kept my reflexes sharp and the striking surfaces of my hands callused and hard, and allowed me to practice some of the strikes and blocks I’d neglected to some degree while training in judo. It would have made an interesting conversation piece, if anyone ever visited my apartment.

During the days that followed, I busied myself with my preparations for leaving Osaka. Moving hastily would be a mistake: the transitions are where you’re most vulnerable, and someone who couldn’t track me now might very well find himself able to do so if I dove suddenly into a less securely backstopped life. And Tatsu might be expecting me to move quickly; if so, he would be prepared to follow me. Conversely, if I stayed put, he might be lulled, giving me the opportunity to lose him entirely when the timing and preparations were right. He had no reason to come after me for the moment, so the lesser risk was to take the appropriate time to set things up correctly.

I had decided on Brazil, and it was for this that I’d been studying the Portuguese that had been so useful with Naomi. Hong Kong, Singapore, or some other Asian destination, or perhaps somewhere in the States, might have been a more obvious choice, but that was of course one of the things that Brazil had going for it. And even if someone thought to look for me there, they would have a hell of a time: Brazil’s multitudes of ethnic Japanese have branched out into all areas of the country’s life, and one more transplant wasn’t going to arouse any attention at all.

Rio de Janeiro, which offered culture, climate, and a significant transient population consisting largely of tourists, would be ideal. The city is far from the world’s intelligence, terrorism, and Interpol focal points, so I would have relatively few worries about accidental sightings, security camera networks, and the other natural enemies of the fugitive. I would even be able to return to judo, or at least one of its cousins: the Brazilian Gracie family had taken one of judo’s forebears, jujitsu, carried into the country by arriving Japanese, and developed it into arguably the most sophisticated ground fighting system the world has ever seen. It’s practiced fanatically in Brazil, and has become popular all over the world, including Japan.

Along with the right location, I had an ice-cold alternate identity, something I’d been nurturing for a long time in preparation for a day when I might have to drop off the map more completely than I ever had before. About a decade earlier, as I was surveilling and preparing to eliminate a certain bureaucrat, I was struck by the degree to which the man superficially resembled me-the age, height, build, even the face wasn’t too far off. The subject also had a wonderful name: Taro Yamada, the Japanese equivalent of John Smith. I had done some digging, and learned that Yamada-san lacked a close family. There seemed to be no one who would miss him enough to go looking for him if he happened to disappear.

Now, a lot of books will tell you that you can build a new identity using the name of someone deceased, but that’s only true if no one filed a death certificate. If the authorities were involved in any way-say, the person died in a hospice or hospital, or gets buried or cremated, which, if you think about it, applies to pretty much everyone, or if someone files a missing person report-a certificate will be filed. Or if a relative wants to get his or her hands on any aspect of the decedent’s estate-in which case you’re talking about the transfer of title to real and personal property and probably probate-again, a certificate will be filed. And if you decide to proceed anyway, then even if you do manage to get some additional new identification based on the dead person’s particulars, the new ID will always be fatally flawed, and, eventually, when you apply for a driver’s license, or for credit, or when you try to get pretty much any job, or file a tax return, or when you try to cross a border-in short, when you try to do any one of the innumerable things for which you needed your new identity in the first place-a “what’s wrong with this picture” alert will pop up on someone’s screen, and you will be promptly and thoroughly screwed.

So what about the identity of someone who’s still living? This works fine for short-term scams, known colloquially as “identity theft,” although perhaps better understood as “identity borrowing,” but is infeasible for anything long-term. After all, who’s going to be responsible for those new credit cards? And where do the bills get sent? Okay, then what about using someone who’s, say, disappeared for some reason, assuming you even know of such a person? Well, what about it? Did the person have debts? Was he a drug dealer? Because if he had anyone looking for him before, now they’ll be looking for you. And anyway, what do you do if Mr. Missing Person suddenly resurfaces?

Of course, if you know of someone who’s dead because you happen to have killed him, that’s a little different. True, you’d have to dispose of the body-in a manner that ensures it will never be found-a risky and often grisly chore that isn’t for everyone. But if you’ve come this far, and if you know that no one is going to report the person dead, or even missing, you’ve got something potentially valuable on your hands. If you also know that he’s got a good credit history, because you’ve gone on paying bills incurred in his name, you might just have landed yourself a winner.