“But it has finally hit me: she is neither a concept nor a symbol nor a metaphor. She actually exists: she has warm flesh and a spirit that moves. I never should have lost sight of that warmth and that movement. It took me twenty years to understand something so obvious. It always takes me a while to think of things, but this is a little too much. It may already be too late. But one way or another, I want to find her.”

With her knees on the floor, Fuka-Eri straightened up, the shape of her nipples showing through the Jeff Beck T-shirt.

“Ah-oh-mah-meh,” Fuka-Eri said slowly, as if pondering each syllable.

“Yes. Green Peas. It’s an unusual name.”

“You want to meet her,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark.

“Yes, of course I want to meet her,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri chewed her lower lip as she took a moment to think about something. Then she looked up as if she had hit upon a new idea and said, “She might be very close by.”

CHAPTER 17

Aomame

PULL THE RAT OUT

The seven a.m. television news carried a big report on the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station’s flooding, but there was no mention of the death of Sakigake’s Leader in a suite at the Hotel Okura. When NHK’s news ended, Aomame switched channels and watched the news on a few other channels, but none of them announced that large man’s painless death.

They hid his body, Aomame thought, scowling. Tamaru had predicted such a possibility, but she had found it hard to believe that they would actually do it. Somehow they had managed to carry Leader’s corpse from the Hotel Okura suite, load it into a car, and take it away. He was a big man, and the corpse must have been tremendously heavy. The hotel was full of guests and employees. Security cameras were everywhere. How had they succeeded in carrying the corpse to the hotel’s underground parking lot without having anyone notice?

They must have transported the body at night to the headquarters in Yamanashi and then held a discussion of what to do with it. At least they were not going to formally report his death to the police. Once you’ve hidden something, you have to keep it hidden.

Aomame, of course, had no idea how they intended to fill the vacuum created by Leader’s death. But they would exhaust every means available to them to maintain the organization. As the man himself had said, the system would endure with or without a leader. Who could inherit Leader’s mantle? That problem had nothing to do with Aomame. Her assignment had been to liquidate Leader, not to crush a religion.

She thought about the two bodyguards in their dark suits. Buzzcut and Ponytail. When they got back to headquarters, would they be held responsible for having allowed Leader to be wiped out before their very eyes? Aomame imagined their next assignment: “Find that woman, no matter what. Don’t come back here until you do.” It was possible.

She ate an apple for breakfast, but she had almost no appetite. Her hands still retained the sensation of driving the needle into the back of the man’s neck. While peeling the apple with a small knife in her right hand, she felt a slight trembling in her body—a trembling she had never experienced before. When she had killed someone in the past, the memory of it had nearly faded after a night’s sleep. Though it never felt good to take a person’s life, those were all men who didn’t deserve to go on living. They inspired more disgust than human pity. But this time was different. Objectively, what this man had been doing was perhaps an affront to humanity. But he himself was, in many senses, an extraordinary human being, and his extraordinariness, at least in part, appeared to transcend standards of good and evil. Ending his life had also been something extraordinary. It had left a strange kind of resonance in her hands—an extraordinary resonance.

What he had left behind was a “promise.” This was the conclusion to which Aomame’s thoughts led her. The weight of that promise was left in her hands as a sign. She understood this. The sign might not fade from her hands—ever.

The phone rang shortly after nine a.m. It was Tamaru. It rang three times, stopped, and started again twenty seconds later.

“They didn’t call the police after all,” Tamaru said. “It’s not on the TV news or in the paper.”

“He did die, though. I’m sure of that.”

“Yes, of course, I know. No question he died. There were a few movements around there. They’ve already cleared out of the hotel. They called in several people from their city branch office in the middle of the night, probably to help deal with the body. They’re good at things like that. Around one a.m., an S-Class Mercedes and a Toyota Hiace van left the hotel parking lot. Both had dark glass and Yamanashi plates. They were probably back in Sakigake headquarters by sunrise. The police investigated the compound the day before yesterday, but it wasn’t a full-scale operation, and all the officers were long gone by then. Sakigake has a big incinerator. If you threw a body in there, it wouldn’t leave a bone, just clean smoke.”

“Creepy.”

“They’re a creepy bunch, all right. Even if their Leader is dead, the organization will keep moving for a while, like a snake that keeps going even after its head is cut off. Head on or off, it knows exactly where it’s headed. Nobody can say what will happen in the future. It might die. Or grow a new head.”

“He was no ordinary man.”

Tamaru offered no opinion on that matter.

“Completely different from the others,” Aomame said.

Tamaru took a moment to gauge the resonance of her words. Then he said, “Yes, I can imagine this was different from the others. But we’d better start thinking about what happens from now on, and be a little more practical. Otherwise you won’t be able to survive.”

Aomame thought she should say something, but the words would not come. The trembling was still there in her body.

“Madame tells me she wants to talk to you,” Tamaru said. “Can you talk?”

“Of course,” Aomame said.

The dowager took the phone. Aomame could sense relief in her voice.

“I am so grateful to you, more than I can ever say. You handled this one perfectly.”

“Thank you very much. But I don’t think I’ll be able to do it again,” Aomame said.

“No, I realize that. We asked too much of you. I’m so happy you’re all right. We won’t be asking you to do this anymore. This was the last time. We have prepared a place for you to settle into. You won’t have to worry about a thing. Just lie low for a while in the safe house. In the meantime, we’ll make arrangements for you to move into your new life.”

Aomame thanked her.

“Do you have everything you need there? If not, let us know. I’ll have Tamaru take care of it right away.”

“No, thank you. As far as I can tell, everything I need is here.”

The dowager lightly cleared her throat. “Now, this is something I want you to keep in mind. What we did was absolutely right. We punished the man for his crimes and prevented him from committing any more. There will be no more victims. We put a stop to that. You must not let this bother you.”

“He said the same thing.”

“ ‘He’?”

“Sakigake’s Leader. The man I took care of last night.”

The dowager remained silent for a full five seconds. Then she said, “He knew?”

“Yes, he knew I was there to take care of him, and still he let me in. He was, if anything, hoping for death. His body had already suffered serious injury and was heading toward a slow but inevitable end. All I did was speed up the process somewhat and provide relief to a body tortured by intense pain.”