Takashi waited for Fumio to leave in the elevator. He replaced the tantō on its mount and went to his study. He had a large monitor on his antique desk, and, as he woke the screen with a tap on the mouse, the feed from the four cameras in the lobby at the foot of the building was displayed. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but there was something about what had happened that evening that had him on edge. Shinoda and Kodama were on duty, both men sitting behind the reception desk, neither showing any real diligence. They were lazy and not particularly effective. He remembered that Milton had schooled them both when they were supposed to be following Sakura after she had met her father; he recalled what Katsuro had said about the gaijin and hoped that he had been right in reporting his demise.

Takashi opened his humidor for a cigar and was about to take it out of its plastic wrapper when he saw movement on the screen. He looked at the time—just after eleven—and, although it was not so late that activity in the lobby would be unusual, there was something about the way that the figure was moving—head down, furtive—that caught his eye. Takashi watched as the figure moved across the fields of view of the four cameras: a shot from behind by the camera in the elevator lobby, then from the right as the man moved into the main area, then from the left as he passed the desk. The final camera was mounted above the door, and the figure made the mistake of glancing up at it as he passed through the door.

Takashi rested the cigar on the lid of the humidor and picked up his phone.

“Otōsan?” Katsuro said. “What is it?”

“Come back upstairs. We have a problem.”

VIII. Tuesday

Part VIII

Tuesday

114

Milton woke up in the storeroom. He looked at his watch and saw that two hours had passed since he and Hachirō had finished their conversation. Milton had told the old man that he would grab a little sleep to refresh himself in readiness for what he intended to do. He looked around the room, the space where they had kept Natsuki Furokawa while Milton negotiated with Satoshi. That seemed like a long time ago now, everything that he had hoped to achieve—the retrieval of the stolen sword and its exchange for Sakura and Yamato’s safety—no more than a bad joke, a rejoinder to his foolish temerity. Things were worse now than they had been then.