“There’s the money you paid me before. It’s just sitting in a safe-deposit box.”

“Take the cash out, but don’t keep it in your apartment. Think about someplace good to put it.”

“All right.”

“That’s all we need you to do for now. Otherwise, just go about your business as usual, not changing your lifestyle or doing anything that would attract attention. And make sure you don’t talk about anything important on the telephone.”

Once she had finished saying this much, the dowager settled more deeply into her chair, as if she had used up her entire reserve of energy.

“Has the date been set?” Aomame asked.

“Not yet, unfortunately,” the dowager said. “We’re still waiting for them to contact us. The arrangements have been made, but they won’t decide their schedule until the last minute. It could be another week, or it could be another month. We don’t know the place, either. We just have to ask you to stand by, I’m afraid, on pins and needles.”

“I don’t mind waiting,” Aomame said, “but I wonder if you can give me even a general idea about the ‘arrangements.’ ”

“You’ll be giving him a muscle-stretching session,” the dowager said. “What you always do. He has some kind of physical problems. They’re not life-threatening, but we’ve heard they give him a lot of trouble. In addition to orthodox medicine, he’s tried a number of alternative treatments in an attempt to solve these ‘problems’—shiatsu, acupuncture, massage—but none of them seems to help. These physical problems are the only weak spot of this man they call ‘Leader.’ It’s the breach in his defenses that we’ve been looking for.”

The curtains were drawn on the window behind the dowager, concealing the moons, but Aomame could feel their cool gaze against her skin. Their conspiratorial silence seemed to be stealing into the room.

“We have a spy inside the Sakigake organization, and we’ve used him to pass the word that you are an outstanding expert in muscle stretching. This was not especially difficult, because it happens to be true. Now they are very interested in you. At first, they wanted to bring you into their compound in Yamanashi, but we made it clear that you are far too busy with your work to leave Tokyo. In any case, the man comes to Tokyo at least once a month on business. He stays incognito in a downtown hotel. You will be giving him a stretching session there. All you have to do is take the usual steps with him once you’re inside.”

Aomame imagined the scene. A hotel room. A man is lying on a yoga mat, and she is stretching his muscles. She can’t see his face. On his stomach, he leaves the back of his neck exposed to her, defenseless. She reaches over and takes the ice pick from her bag.

“So he and I can be alone together in his room?” Aomame asked.

The dowager nodded. “Leader keeps his physical problems hidden from others in the organization, so there should be no one else present. You and he will be alone.”

“Do they know my name and where I work?”

“They are exceedingly cautious people. They’ve already done a thorough background check on you and found no problems. We received word yesterday that they will want you to come to where he is staying. They will let us know as soon as the time and place are set.”

“I come here so often, don’t you think there is some chance they will find our relationship suspicious?”

“I’m just a member of the sports club where you work, and you come to my house as a personal trainer. They have no reason to think that there might be any more to our relationship than that.”

Aomame responded with a nod.

The dowager said, “Whenever this Leader person leaves the compound and moves around, he has two bodyguards who accompany him. Both are believers and karate belt holders. We don’t know yet if they also carry weapons, but they are apparently good at what they do. They train every day. According to Tamaru, though, they are amateurs.”

“Unlike Tamaru.”

“Yes, unlike Tamaru. He used to belong to a Self-Defense Force Ranger unit. Those people have it pounded into them to carry out whatever needs to be done to accomplish the mission, and to do it instantly, without the slightest hesitation. The important thing is not to hesitate, no matter who the opponent might be. Amateurs hesitate—especially when the opponent is, say, a young woman.”

The dowager sank her head back into the chair and sighed deeply. Then she straightened herself again and looked directly at Aomame.

“The two bodyguards will most likely wait in the next room of the suite while you are administering your treatment to Leader. You’ll be alone with him for an hour. That is how we have set things up for now. How it will actually go is anybody’s guess. Things can be fluid. Leader never reveals his plan of action until the very last minute.”

“How old a man is he?”

“Probably in his mid-fifties. We’ve heard he’s a big man. Unfortunately, we don’t know any more than that.”

Tamaru was waiting at the front door. She gave him her spare apartment key, driver’s license, passport, and health insurance card. He stepped inside and made copies of the documents. After checking to see that he had all the necessary copies, he handed the originals back to Aomame. Then he showed Aomame to his office, which was next to the front door. It was a small, square space lacking any decoration. A tiny window opened to the garden. The wall-mounted air conditioner hummed along. He had Aomame sit in a small wooden chair, while he sat at his desk. On the wall above the desk hung a row of four monitor screens with changeable camera angles. Four video decks constantly recorded their images. The screens showed views outside the walls. The far right one displayed an image of the front door of the safe house where the women were living. The new guard dog was also visible, resting on the ground. It was somewhat smaller than the previous dog.

“The tape didn’t show how the dog died,” Tamaru said, as if anticipating a question from Aomame. “She wasn’t tied up at the time. There’s no way she could have untied herself, so possibly someone untied her.”

“Someone who could approach without causing her to bark.”

“That’s what it amounts to.”

“Strange.”

Tamaru nodded but said nothing. He had thought about the various possibilities so much on his own that he was sick of thinking about them. There was nothing left for him to say to anybody else.

Tamaru reached over and opened a drawer of the cabinet by his desk, taking out a black plastic bag. From the bag he took a faded blue bath towel, and when he spread the towel open, a lustrous black object emerged—a small automatic pistol. Saying nothing, he handed it to Aomame, who also remained silent as she took it. She tested the weight of it in her hand. It was much lighter than it appeared to be. Such a small, light object could deliver death to a human being.

“You just made two major mistakes. Do you know what they were?” Tamaru asked.

Aomame thought over the actions she had just taken but could discover no mistakes. All she had done was take the gun that was handed to her. “I don’t know,” she said.

“First, when you took the gun, you didn’t check to see if it was loaded or not and, if it was loaded, whether the safety was on. The second was that, after you took the gun, you pointed it—even if only for one split second—at me. You broke two absolute rules. Also, you should never put your finger inside the trigger guard if you have no intention of firing the gun.”

“I see. I’ll be careful from now on.”

“Emergency situations aside, you should never handle or hand over or carry a gun that has even one bullet in it. And whenever you see a gun, you should treat it as loaded until you know for sure otherwise. Guns are made to kill people. You can never be too careful with them. Some people might laugh at me for being too cautious, but stupid accidents happen all the time, and the ones who get killed or badly wounded are usually the ones who were laughing.”