Genocide of One: A Thriller (18 page)

“Let’s head on out,” Meyers said, and started walking. Garrett followed behind him,
expressionless. Only Mick seemed in high spirits, which grated on Yeager’s nerves
all the more. It looked to him like all of them were trying, in their own way, to
downplay the incident.

The four of them went back to where they’d left their backpacks. Yeager lifted his,
and once they formed up in single file he motioned with his chin to Mick the direction
they should take.

The photo that President Burns held in his hand showed an infant, its legs and arms
ripped off. An Iraqi child. An ordinary citizen who had gotten caught up in the massive
sweep against anti-American insurgents.

The president grimaced and pressed the photo into the hands of his vice president,
Chamberlain. Chamberlain’s expression remained fixed.

Across from them at the conference table, Secretary of State Ballard realized he’d
have to adopt another tactic quickly if he were to persuade this pair of cold-hearted
men.

“The number of civilian casualties has gone up, hasn’t it?” Chamberlain said, trying
to forestall him. “If the media sniffs this out it could cause problems.”

Secretary of Defense Lattimer nodded slowly.

Ballard looked around the Cabinet Room table at each person in turn, trying to appeal
to any remnants of conscience that might still lie hidden within the administration.
“A hundred thousand civilians have already died in Iraq because of our attacks. Do
you really think that’s the way to gain the support of the Iraqi people?”

“That level of collateral damage is to be expected,” Chamberlain asserted.

If a foreign military force were to kill Chamberlain’s own family, would he repeat
the same line? Ballard doubted it. But he put aside the sarcasm and innuendo and patiently
continued. “With this much damage taking place, the enemy will be able to stir up
even more hatred toward us and gain strength. If we want to maintain an acceptable
level of security, we need to immediately send in reinforcements.”

“That is not within your purview,” Chamberlain said dismissively.

“I figured that when we decide military options we need to consider things from a
diplomatic standpoint as well.” Ballard had been, at one time, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.

“The decision’s already made. We can’t reverse it now.”

As he looked at the men, all nodding, Ballard fell to wondering at what point the
neocons had become so arrogant. Even among conservatives they were supposed to be
just one small faction.

“So on this matter we’re agreed, then?” Chief of Staff Acres said, checking that this
was the president’s intention before moving the meeting along. “Before we look at
the last item on the agenda, those who are finished here may leave.”

The assistant secretaries of state, with the exception of the one in charge of Africa,
streamed out of the Cabinet Room. All that remained were the core cabinet members
and those representing the intelligence community. Ballard gave up arguing with them.

“What’s the final item?” Chamberlain asked.

“The special access program,” the chief of staff said. “Code name Nemesis.”

Once they heard this the mood in the room relaxed, as though it were time for dessert
after a tough day of negotiations. Only Watkins, the director of national intelligence,
and Holland, director of the CIA, tried not to let anyone sense the tension they were
feeling. The special access program was entering a delicate phase.

The president’s special adviser for science and technology, Dr. Melvin Gardner, entered,
and the cabinet members greeted him warmly.

Dr. Gardner took his seat. “Let me brief you on where we are,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Operation Nemesis is proceeding smoothly. The first phase, in Africa, will be concluded
in a few days. But there is one small issue that’s arisen. According to reports from
the NSA, there are some disturbing things occurring in Japan.”

“Japan?” Burns asked, surprised. “Why Japan?”

“The details are still unclear. It’s probably nothing, but we’re taking steps to deal
with it. As a precaution.”

Sensing that the president wasn’t satisfied with this explanation, Holland stepped
in. “There’s evidence that someone in Tokyo is trying to access Nemesis, and our investigation
pinpointed a university professor named Seiji Koga and his son. A few days ago the
professor died suddenly, and his son is continuing his activities.”

“What does his son do?”

“His name is Kento Koga. He’s a grad student.”

“What’s his field?” Chamberlain asked. “Journalism? Religion?”

“Pharmacology. His father was a virologist.”

“But how could they have uncovered our black ops?”

“We’re looking into that. The CIA recruited a local operative to get close to the
young man. And the FBI is conducting its own operation through the local police antiterrorism
unit.”

“Naturally,” Watkins added, “neither the Japanese operative nor the local police has
been told anything about Nemesis. Everything is under our control.”

“I see,” said Secretary of Defense Lattimer, who would normally have been supervising
manager of Nemesis. “The liaison from the Office of Special Plans asked me to get
your opinion.” By “your” he meant Secretary of State Ballard. “If, worst-case scenario,
we have to take some harsh steps in Japan, can we count on the cooperation of their
government?”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘harsh steps’?”

“Indeed,” Lattimer said. “I wonder if the head of the Office of Special Plans is considering
the appropriate measures.”

“The head of the office is that young fellow you were telling me about?” Burns asked.

“Correct. I understand he’s a very capable person.”

“If things don’t go too far, I think the Japanese government will cooperate,” Lattimer
said, considering the balance of power between the two nations. Then, as might be
expected of a moderate, he added, “I would, though, only like us to take harsh steps
as a last resort.”

As he listened to this exchange, Holland thought of the Grave, a stinking underground
torture chamber in Syria. The place had a holding cell no bigger than a coffin, a
variety of instruments of torture, and torturers who loved more than anything to inflict
pain on anyone who visited. Burns had angrily denounced Syria for human rights violations,
dubbing it an outlaw state, but this was a shameless lie directed at the world community.
Ignoring the Geneva Convention stipulations on the treatment of prisoners, Burns continued
to authorize the handover of terrorist suspects to the Syrian government for torture.
And Syria wasn’t the only country that carried out torture on America’s behalf—enemy
combatants had been handed over to Egypt, Morocco, and Uzbekistan as well. And the
organization that carried out these lethal directives—called extraordinary renditions—was
none other than the CIA, headed by Holland.

Holland, the president’s accomplice in crime, gazed at Gregory S. Burns with a gloomy
feeling. A white man in the prime of life, president of the United States, greeted
with a standing ovation every time he arrived somewhere to give a speech. The most
powerful person on earth. But all it took was a word from this courtly looking man
for people to be tortured and killed.

If he fell into the clutches of this evil man, this Japanese grad student would easily
be crushed. Like a miserable bug.

He woke up
in pitch blackness. Kento thought it was still night and was going to go back to
sleep, but then he felt how cramped his arms and legs were, and he remembered where
he was. The private little lab his father had set up.

He extracted his arms from the sleeping bag and checked his watch. It was 9:00 a.m.
He must have been exhausted, for he’d slept unexpectedly soundly. Yesterday, after
the once-in-a-lifetime adventure of having leaped from his second-floor apartment
to shake off the pursuing detectives, he’d taken a series of trains, finally reaching
Machida. Upon arriving he used the ATM card issued in the name of Yoshinobu Suzuki
and had withdrawn some cash and bought a change of clothes. Today was his second day
on the run from the law.

Kento got up and was tempted to open the thick blackout curtains, but he wanted to
avoid drawing any attention to himself, so he left them closed. If someone in the
neighborhood found out about this mysterious laboratory, they very well might contact
the police.

He turned the light on in the small room and washed his face in the kitchen sink.
He had a lot to do today.

Breakfast consisted of a sweet roll he’d bought the night before at a convenience
store. After eating he began taking care of the forty mice in the closet. As he started
to clean out their cages he noticed a sheaf of documents in the back of the closet.
They were in English, not Japanese.

The first page was a voucher issued by a foreign transport firm showing a shipment
from the Lisbon University Medical Center in Portugal to the Tama Polytechnic University
in Tokyo. The sender was Dr. Antonio Garrado.

Dr. Antonio Garrado
.

Kento suddenly remembered this was the name of the world’s leading expert on PAECS.
Surprised, he looked through the rest of the documents.

There was a bill for 76,000 euros and a receipt with the number 40 written on it.
This was the number of mice. His father must have paid this huge amount—equivalent
to about ten million yen—for those forty mice in the closet, purchasing them from
Dr. Garrado.

Another document stated that there were two types of mice: half of them were normal
and healthy, while the second group displayed the pathology for PAECS.

There were four cages lined up, and Kento looked at the two cages on the right. These
twenty weak-looking mice had had their genes artificially modified and were showing
symptoms of the disease.

It made sense that his father, who hoped to create a cure for this intractable disease,
had purchased the mice. In order to test in vivo the drug he hoped to synthesize,
animal subjects that had the disease were a must.

Kento knew that raising transgenic mice like this in a run-down apartment was clearly
illegal. Because animals whose genes had been modified did not exist in the natural
world, the law required that they be kept under very strict supervision.

Even so, he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of them. He went about cleaning their
cages, careful to not let them get out. The genetically engineered mice, at any rate,
didn’t have much time left—assuming that Kento didn’t come up with a drug that could
treat their condition.

A sense of helplessness again reared its head, but Kento suppressed the feeling, silently
going about the task of cleaning the mice’s little abodes.

It was just before noon when he left the lab, heading toward Akihabara. There were
a couple of places he needed to phone, but all the numbers were in his contacts list
in his cell phone, which he had to keep turned off. Somehow he had to access them.

Kento changed trains at Shinjuku, doing what he could to take into account the possibility
that the police might be trailing him. Akihabara station was where he’d run to the
day before, and there was a risk that the police had it staked out. So he got off
the train at the station before Akihabara and walked the rest of the way to the famous
streets where all the stores were selling the latest electronic gadgets.

He made the rounds of a few stores, searching for a device an engineer friend had
once had. In the fourth store he finally found it—a small, box-shaped device that
fit in the palm of his hand. He went into a coffee shop, sat down in a corner, and
turned the device on. The mechanism, which jammed radio waves from cell phones, immediately
showed what it was capable of. A young woman at the counter, talking into her cell
phone, suddenly said “Hello? Hello?” in a loud voice and stared at her now nonfunctioning
phone.

Sorry
, Kento silently said in apology. He took out his own cell phone and turned it on.
The screen displayed the words
NO SIGNAL
. The base-station antenna was being jammed and couldn’t catch the signal from his
phone. No danger now of anyone tracing his position. Relieved, he opened his contacts
list and copied down all the phone numbers he thought he might need.

As soon as he was done, he left the coffee shop and went into a phone booth along
the main street. The first number he called was the one he didn’t have to read his
memo to remember—his home phone number.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Kento?” Once she heard her son’s voice, his mother came out with a burst of words.
“I’ve called you so many times since last night. What is going on? We’re having a
major problem here.”

Kento had a bad feeling. “What do you mean, a problem?”

“Someone from the police came and searched through your father’s room and his belongings.”

So the police had been to his house. His mother told him that they had used the same
excuse they’d used with Kento, that they were seeking help with an FBI investigation.

“And one of the detectives asked me this strange thing,” she went on. “He asked, ‘Do
you know about a book that has a Popsicle stain on it?’”

A chill went up Kento’s spine.

Open the book you dropped a Popsicle on
.

His father was right—his e-mails
were
being intercepted.

Consider all means of communication you use—landlines, cell phones, e-mail, and faxes—to
be tapped.

His father hadn’t been paranoid. Even this very moment he might be under surveillance.
Kento felt an ominous feeling grip his chest. A huge, unseen power had him in its
clutches and was trying to crush him.

“Do you have any idea what they’re talking about?”

“No, I don’t,” Kento quickly replied. Following his father’s instructions, he’d gotten
rid of the book with the Popsicle stain and the memo hidden inside. But what in the
world had his father been up to? It all seemed suspect to him now—both the inference
he’d made about his father being swindled into funding the development of a new drug
and the story the detective had given him about the FBI. There had to be an even bigger
secret hidden in his father’s actions while he was alive.

“They told me to tell them if you got in touch.”

“The detectives?”

“Yes. You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?”

“I haven’t done anything,” Kento replied, and looked around him uneasily. If his home
phone was tapped, then they could trace the location he was calling from. “Don’t tell
the detectives I called you, okay?”

“Why not?”

“It’s too much trouble if I get involved. I’m too busy with experiments.”

“But—”

“All right? And my cell phone is broken, so you can’t call me. If something comes
up, I’ll get in touch.”

“Kento?” his mother began, but he cut her off. He left the phone booth, hustling down
the sidewalk, trying to put some distance between himself and the phone. He passed
by some big-box electronics stores and stores selling video game software, and when
he’d gotten about a block away he turned around. From far beyond the phone booth a
uniformed policeman on a bicycle was heading in his direction. His heart began to
pound. Was he looking for him?

Kento slipped into an alley and came out onto another main thoroughfare. The policeman
didn’t seem to be following him. He grabbed a taxi and went over to Jinbo-cho, another
nearby shopping district. He went into another phone booth there and dialed his laboratory.

Professor Sonoda answered the phone, and when he realized it was Kento he gave a shout
of surprise and then lowered his voice, as if not wanting to be overheard. “Kento!
What in the world is going on?”

“Hmm?” Kento had officially asked for some time off, so his response took the wind
right out of his sails. “What do you mean?”

“The police were here until a few minutes ago. They had a warrant for your arrest.”

Kento was shocked. “
Arrest?
What did they say I did?”

“According to the detective you’re charged with three crimes. Obstruction of justice,
destruction of property, and negligent injury. Do you have any clue what this is all
about?”

He certainly did. He’d obstructed the search of his apartment, had put a dent in the
car when he’d run away, and the detective who’d been driving the car hit his head
as a result.

“Yeah, but…” Kento stammered, trying to explain himself. “It’s all a mistake. I’d
never do anything like that.”

“Then you should go to the police right away and explain the situation.”

“All right. I’ll do that.” He had to keep his professor from worrying. “I might have
to take a few more days off, but I hope that’s all right.”

“Don’t worry about us. Take care of yourself first.”

“Did the detectives say anything else?”

“That’s all I heard. After that they barraged the staff with questions. About your
relationships.”

“Relationships?”

“They seem to suspect that you’re hiding out in a friend’s place.”

He couldn’t expect help from anyone else now. If he asked his friends in the lab for
anything, they’d contact the police. Most of the phone numbers he’d gone to such trouble
to write down were worthless.

“I suggest you go to the nearest police station and clear this up.”

“I will,” Kento replied. He apologized for all the worry he’d caused and hung up.

Things were going downhill faster than he’d expected. If the police caught him now,
he wouldn’t get away scot-free. He’d probably be forced to quit grad school and might
even wind up in jail.

He pictured how upset everyone at his lab must be and fell into a dark funk. Bad rumors
get around quickly. The lab was always his one refuge, a place where he felt he belonged,
and now that it had been breached, the humiliation and sense of helplessness had him
on the verge of tears.

He took the subway, unsure of his destination, and sat there, tortured by the uncertainty
of his future. He couldn’t run from the police forever. The most realistic choice,
certainly, was to give himself up to the Public Security Bureau. But beyond the fear
of being put in handcuffs and treated as a criminal, an unfocused apprehension held
him back. Why would the FBI have falsely accused his father? And why were the Japanese
police accusing him of wrongdoing—even trying to arrest him? He had the eerie sense
of a larger force that lay behind them, reaching out of the darkness to grab him in
its clutches. Something was happening out there, hidden from him, and he had to find
out what it was.

The subway train arrived in Shibuya, and Kento got off. As he walked around on the
street, he concluded that the only thing he could do was try to maintain the status
quo. As he’d decided from the beginning, he needed to answer the final riddle—he needed
to ascertain the contents of the Heisman Report.

He went into a phone booth and lifted the receiver. He checked the list of phone numbers
he’d written and dialed Sugai’s office. The reporter answered his cell phone on the
third ring.

“Oh, Kento.”

Kento was relieved that he sounded so calm. The police had clearly not yet visited
his office.

“Did you listen to the message I left on your cell phone?” Sugai asked.

“No—I’m sorry, but I haven’t. My cell isn’t working.”

“Then I’ll repeat it. I got an e-mail this morning from a colleague at our Washington
bureau.”

“Did he find out anything about the Heisman Report?”

“Yes, and it was pretty surprising. Three months ago there was a withdrawal notice
sent out on the Heisman Report, so it’s impossible to get a copy of it. In other words,
it’s been classified.”

“Classified?”

“Right. US documents that can cause problems are kept from the public for national
security reasons.”

National security reasons
. For a grad student in Japan, the phrase was like something from a different world.
Still, he was sure it had something to do with what he’d gotten himself mixed up in.
The oppressive feeling he’d been having got even stronger, overwhelming him. It was
as though his father’s final message to him had predicted everything that would happen.

I’d like you to do the research alone. Don’t tell anybody. But if you find yourself
in danger, give it all up right away.

“But why would it be classified now?”

“I have no way of knowing. But if you really want to find out what’s in the report
there is a way. As I mentioned before, you could search through magazines from thirty
years ago. Back then the report wasn’t secret at all.”

“How would I find old magazines?”

“The National Diet Library should have them.”

Kento had used the Diet Library in the past, but was reluctant to follow the suggestion.
When you entered the library you had to fill out a form giving your name and address.
He wasn’t sure if the police dragnet extended that far, but it was best to play it
safe.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of much help. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” Kento began, and then remembered he still had something he wanted ask Sugai.
“But there’s one more thing. What’s the best way of investigating a person’s background?”

“A background check? I’d have to ask the reporters on the city desk. There’s somebody
you want to look into?”