“Unless you’re sure he doesn’t, I’d go somewhere else—at least for the first few years. You don’t want him coming after you.”

“You said that you’d be able to fix things.”

“I might be able to,” Milton said. “But it might not go the way I want it to, and, if it doesn’t, he won’t be happy. We’ll need to think about where you might go.”

“Would you come?”

He stopped. “Sorry?”

“With me and Yamato—would you come with us?”

Milton was caught off guard. He had given the prospect a little idle thought during the voyage from Bali, but hadn’t really treated it seriously. The fact that he had entertained it at all was a departure for him; he would usually have dismissed it out of hand. He hadn’t considered being with anyone for years and was settled in his itinerant lifestyle. He had no commitments and no ties and, most important of all, there was no one close enough to him who could be harmed thanks to that association. Milton was drawn to danger; that had always been the case. There were people who had run afoul of him over the years, both before and after his time in the Group, who would have liked nothing more than to inflict pain on him. Beyond that, he knew that life with him would be difficult. His moods were unpredictable and his alcoholism often made him impossible to be around. He had made the decision long ago that he would travel alone and, in all the time since he had left London, he had never really met anyone who had given him reason to question that conclusion. There had been women for whom he might have been persuaded to change his mind, but the right moment had never arrived before now.

He reached into his pocket and felt for the chip that he had been given at the meeting. He ran his finger over the stippled edge. Eight years sober. He was a different man now than he had been when he had taken his last drink. Perhaps he could allow himself the possibility of happiness with someone else.

He looked over at Sakura and wondered: might this be different?

“John?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Let me think about it.”

* * *

They reached Shinjuku and Milton could not help but chuckle as the Gracery came into view. Sakura hadn’t been kidding: there was a large model of Godzilla next to the hotel. It towered over Toho Cinema in Shinjuku, and, at night, the beast was reputed to move and his eyes were said to flash.

“Only in Tokyo,” Milton said, pointing up to it.