He’d managed to find a rental car with tinted windows that, combined with his dark hair and complexion, would prevent him from attracting too much attention. Not that the neighborhood was exactly awash with pedestrians. He’d seen a group of kids playing soccer in a school playground about two miles back, but beyond that the area looked almost deserted. Everyone was still at work.

His target, the materials engineer Genjiro Ueda, lived directly ahead on a wooded hill rising a few hundred feet into the overcast sky. Sun glinted from the windows of widely spaced houses, and a narrow road was intermittently visible through the trees. It was a much more workable setting for what he was there to do. The lots expanded to an even more generous three acres and the foliage grew in density with elevation. The question was whether to go now or to wait for darkness.

It didn’t take long to arrive at a decision. When he and Randi had split up so she could go after Akito Maki, they’d agreed that speed would have to take precedence over discretion. If they were right about Takahashi, he’d be circling the wagons around his people as fast as he could.

Smith kept a close watch on his rearview mirror as he ran through the details Star had uncovered about his target. Ueda was in his late forties and a little thinner and more fit than Smith would have preferred. He’d been a postdoc at the Tokyo Institute of Technology studying carbon fiber technology when he’d suddenly left to start his own firm. He made a good wage—the equivalent of low four hundreds in US dollars—but even the inestimable Star had been unable to get a good bead on who his clients were.

Satellite photos and a few street views from Google showed an elegant two-story house with a fence that was more form than function and lacked a gate. Star had been able to find no evidence that Ueda and his wife of fifteen years had any kind of security system. Also, no kids, no pets, and no neighbors within view. The engineer seemed to work largely out of an office in his house, and his wife didn’t have a job. So the hope was that he’d be there. Smith wasn’t particularly anxious to have to sit around and wait.