Genocide of One: A Thriller (48 page)

November 3, 1996? Kento was even more confused. According to Yuri Sakai’s official
family record, her daughter, Ema, was born on November 4 of the same year. She gave
birth to a daughter the day after arriving back from Zaire? A child whose father wasn’t
recorded? Kento went ahead and asked a leading question. “Did Dr. Sakai give birth
right after returning to Japan?”

“Give birth?” Ando was nonplussed.

“Yes. My father said that she had a daughter.”

“No, that’s not possible,” Ando said with a laugh. “If Dr. Sakai had been pregnant
we would have known. We were all doctors and nurses, after all.”

“But I definitely heard that.” He wasn’t about to back down. He was determined to
find out if Yuri Sakai had had an affair with his father and had given birth to his
half sister.

Kento was about to continue when Ando raised a hand. “I think you’re mistaken. You
must be confusing her with another pregnant woman.”

“Another pregnant woman?”

For the first time Ando looked dubious. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I find it odd.
I just talked about this with a newspaper reporter who came to see me the other day.”

Kento frowned. “What newspaper was he with?”

“The
Toa
newspaper.”

“He wasn’t named Sugai by any chance, was he?”

“Yes, that’s the name. He said he was with their science bureau. Do you know him?”

“He was a friend of my father.” A strange chill ran through him. Why did Sugai tell
him he didn’t have any new information? Had he found some dark secret of his father’s
he didn’t want his son to know?

But Ando didn’t sense Kento’s doubts and went on. “That makes perfect sense. Sugai
must have heard about Dr. Sakai from your father.”

Sugai hadn’t heard of Yuri Sakai until Kento told him about her. “What was he trying
to find out?”

“He said he wanted to write a human interest story.”

“About Yuri Sakai?”

“That’s right. After she left the medical association she apparently moved to the
city’s skid row and was treating day laborers. He said he wanted to write an article
about this female doctor who had a tremendous volunteer spirit. Going back to her
time in Zaire.”

Sugai must have made up some phony story about an article he was writing to extract
more information about Yuri Sakai. “Mr. Sugai didn’t know Dr. Sakai’s address?”

“No. He was having trouble because he couldn’t interview her directly.”

“What did you talk about?”

“About the other pregnant woman. The one I mentioned. I was intentionally vague about
it, though. I’ll tell you the real story, but you have to promise to keep it secret.
It’s a very painful incident for us.”

“Of course,” Kento said, and leaned forward.

“When Dr. Koga visited us in Zaire, he was with an American academic. An anthropologist
studying the Pygmies.”

Kento realized whom he was talking about. “Are you talking about Nigel Pierce?”

“Yes. A very kind person, with a stubbly beard. They came to tell us about a sick
person in the Mbuti camp they wanted us to examine. We went there and found a pregnant
woman in pain in a crude hut. Her name was Anjana, and like the rest of the Pygmies
she was about the size of a child. Dr. Sakai examined her, since she’s an OB-GYN.”
Ando paused to take a sip of coffee. “Anjana had a severe case of preeclampsia, but
there was no hospital nearby equipped to handle her case. We were about to transport
her to a large hospital in a town called Nyankunde when the civil war broke out. We
had to withdraw from the area, but we didn’t know what to do with Anjana. If we left
her, she and her baby would both die, but the main road was cut off, and it didn’t
look like we could make it to the hospital in Nyankunde.”

“So what happened?”

Ando lowered his voice. “What I’m going to tell you now is secret. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“In Zaire the Pygmies are viewed as less than human and aren’t given citizenship.
We discussed it and bribed an official to make a passport for Anjana. So we could
take her to Japan to get treatment.”

Kento was surprised to hear that his father was part of this bold adventure. He’d
never mentioned it after he came back to Japan, because he’d helped smuggle a person
out of a country.

“But getting all the paperwork done wasted time, and that proved a fatal delay,” Ando
said regretfully. “We got to Japan one day later than we planned, and though Anjana
was treated at Dr. Sakai’s clinic, we were too late. The treatment was pointless,
and mother and child both died.”

Kento felt sorry, too, for the sad ending, but a riddle soon reared its head. The
pregnant Pygmy woman they brought to Japan died, along with the fetus. And Yuri Sakai
was not pregnant. Then who was this Ema in Yuri’s family record?

“I think Anjana would have been happier dying among her family in the jungle. But
at the time we just couldn’t abandon her,” Ando said wistfully. “Even now I don’t
know if we did the right thing. At any rate, that was the Zaire mission’s final, unfortunate
incident. Your father probably didn’t tell you the details because it was something
he always regretted.”

He talked with Ando for nearly an hour after that but got no more helpful clues.

Kento left the office and walked in the direction of Sendagaya station. He’d finally
gotten some hard evidence, yet he had no idea how to interpret it. He stopped by a
diner near the station and had, for the first time in a long while, a decent hot meal.
Then he hailed a cab.

At least he could reject the scenario of having a half sister by a different mother.
What Ando told him made it unlikely that his father had had an affair.

Lost in thought, Kento passed where he wanted to get off. He’d told the driver to
drop him off next to the highway, where he
’d 
earlier gotten a taxi, but then he remembered Sugai’s warning and hurriedly changed
destinations. “Just go a bit farther,” he told the driver, “and you’ll see a narrow
alley. Turn in there.”

With the new drug nearly complete he needed to be especially cautious. After he got
out of the taxi he stood there for a time, checking to see if any other cars stopped
nearby. Sure he wasn’t being followed, he walked down the narrow road to his apartment
building. No one seemed to be following him or lying in wait.

Relieved, Kento was about to climb the outside stairs when a man silently slipped
around from the back of the building. Kento felt his heart nearly stop, and he froze.

“Excuse me,” the man said. He had a coat on over ordinary clothes. “Are you visiting
this building?”

“Uh, yeah,” Kento said, hoping to get by with a vague reply.

“Are you a friend of Mr. Yamaguchi on the second floor?”

So the lab was rented in the name of Yamaguchi. “Well, sort of…”

“I’m the landlord.”

“Landlord?” Kento gave the man a once-over. He noticed for the first time how old
he was, way past the retirement age for a policeman—so he couldn’t be a cop.

“Neighbors have been complaining about a bad smell, and I thought it might be coming
from Mr. Yamaguchi’s place.”

Must be the smell of the chemical reagents, Kento realized. They didn’t have a fume
hood, so he’d attached a thick bellows around the ventilating fan in place of a ventilation
system. “I don’t think it’s coming from there,” he said. “What sort of smell is it?”

“A bad smell is all I heard. They say it’s different depending on the day.”

“I don’t think it’s from Mr. Yamaguchi’s. I’ve been there many times and never smelled
anything.” As he said this, Kento tensed up. What would he do if the man asked to
see the place?

“Is that right? Okay, then.” The landlord didn’t press the point. “Maybe it’s Shimada
on the first floor, then.”

Kento started to walk away, greatly relieved, but came to a sudden halt. He turned
around. “There’s someone else in the building besides apartment two-oh-two?”

“Yes—in the last apartment on the first floor. The place is going to be bulldozed
soon, so the rent’s cheap.”

So there was another unseen resident of the building where his father had his hidden
lab. Kento had the weird sensation that someone had been spying on him all along.
Was this Shimada person involved in all this, or was he…?

“What sort of person is Shimada?”

“Well, sort of hard to say—”

“A newspaper reporter type, in his fifties?”

“A reporter?” the man said incredulously, and stared at Kento. “No. And it is a woman,
not a man. About forty, I’d say.”

“A woman,” Kento muttered, and, unable to believe it could be true, described her.
“Slim, hair down to her shoulders, no makeup?”

“That’s the one,” the landlord said, giving a big nod. “Why are you asking?”

“It’s—it’s nothing.” Kento faltered, trying not to let the shock show. “I saw someone
I’d never seen before and thought she was suspicious.”

“She’s not suspicious. Not to worry—she lives here,” the landlord said with a smile.
“I guess I’ll come back later,” he added as he headed down the narrow private road
that led to the main street.

Kento stood there until the old man disappeared from sight, trying to calm down. He
turned back to the apartment building but didn’t take the staircase. Instead he quietly
walked down the first-floor hallway. An outside wall was nearby, so even during the
day the hallway was dim.

Kento stood in front of the last apartment, 103, readied himself, and knocked.

No answer. And no sign of anyone behind the flimsy front door.

Kento glanced in both directions to make sure no one was there and twisted the doorknob.
It was unlocked, and he pulled it open toward him.

“Hello? Anybody home?” he called out, but no one replied. He hesitated for a moment,
then slipped off his shoes and went inside. His were the only shoes at the entrance.
The occupant of the apartment seemed to be out.

The layout was the same as 202, his lab. A kitchen, a bathroom, and, farther on, a
small room. There was a frying pan on top of the stove, evidence that someone actually
lived here.

Kento gingerly walked farther into the apartment and slid open the sliding door to
the small room. There was a minimal amount of furniture. A low table and TV; hangers,
but no clothes on them. In the closet were two sets of futons, which surprised him.
So were two people living here? But the room was as bland and graceless as a cheap
hotel. It was less a place where someone lived full-time than a temporary residence.

Why did it seem so bleak and unoccupied? As he tried to figure this out, he noticed
there weren’t any clothes. No dresser. No luggage, either, which might mean that whoever
lived here was on a trip. And then he remembered the unlocked front door. It seemed
less likely that the person had gone on a trip than that she had hurriedly run away.

He walked around the room some more, and then he noticed the phone and came to an
abrupt halt. The receiver had been altered; there was a device of some kind covering
the mouthpiece.

Kento removed the device, studied it, found the tiny switch, and turned it on. He
paused, then said “Hello” into it. The voice that came through the speaker in back
of the receiver was a low bass, sounding as if it were coming up from the abyss.

Poppy’s voice.

He stood stock-still, device in hand, as he pondered this unexpected discovery. Someone
whose voice he’d recognize, who knew everything about what his father had been up
to—

Yuri Sakai was Poppy.

But would that one piece solve the whole puzzle? Would it explain all that had been
happening?

Immediately he thought of the dossier on Yuri Sakai in the small laptop. Maybe the
CIA was investigating her not as a possible collaborator but as a suspect. So why
had they doubted her to begin with? Nine years ago in Zaire there were many other
Japanese doctors besides Yuri. There was only one reason why she would have been singled
out. Without Kento realizing it, she’d been feeding him information. And Sugai, the
reporter, was the only one he’d told her name to.

The thought upset him, as if he’d been given a hard whack in the head. It wasn’t Yuri
who was working with the CIA, it was Sugai, the science reporter. Sugai was the one
investigating Kento’s movements.

If they catch me they’ll kill me.

He tried to calm his fears as he reviewed his conversations with Sugai. What had he
told him? At least he hadn’t revealed the existence of this lab. Sugai didn’t know
about Jeong-hoon, either. Kento remembered one more important thing. The phone call,
Sugai telling him “You’ve got to get out of there.” What was behind those words?

Maybe, Kento conjectured, Sugai just supplied information about him to the CIA, but
when he understood the CIA’s intentions and knew Kento was in real danger—and realized
the phone was tapped—he tried to help him. This thought comforted him a little, but
the fact remained that he was in danger.

Had he done anything else that would put him at risk? As Kento tried desperately to
recall, he arrived at a possibility.

A tutor to a child who refused to leave the house.

A child who never went outside.

No way, Kento thought, and froze.

Rubens had spent another long day in the command center, and just before midnight
two updates came to his attention, one after the other.

The first report was from the CIA, which had news about Kento Koga’s whereabouts.
They’d intercepted a cell phone signal at the north side of Machida station, the district
they believed he was hiding in, and narrowed down the spot to a three-hundred-meter
radius. When Rubens learned that the Public Security Bureau of the Tokyo police was
focusing their search in this area, he grew impatient. How far had Kento gotten in
developing the new drug? That seedy-looking young Japanese researcher was the only
chance to save the lives of all those children.