“Do you speak English?” she asked, pointing to the copy of 1984 he’d been rereading to pass the time.

“I try,” Yoshima responded easily. “But I don’t think anyone could really understand me.”

It was a lie, of course. While slightly accented, his English was nearly perfect. Another gift from the Chinese government.

“I’m taking a class,” she said. “It’s really hard. So don’t feel bad. I can’t even understand myself!”

Her laugh was engaging enough to turn his thoughts to using the skills he’d been provided to disappear. Maybe somewhere in Japan. Maybe with this very girl.

She turned and he watched her walk away again, the fantasy fading as the physical distance between them grew. There had been so many women like her, so many daydreams of a normal life where his Japanese features didn’t make him the constant target of hatred by the very people he had been charged with protecting.

A bitter smile crossed his lips. The very people he had been charged with protecting.

In truth, the only people he protected were his country’s politicians. And that task was getting harder and harder as they pushed China further toward the brink. The runaway economic growth was slowing, information was becoming increasingly difficult to control, and his hopelessly corrupt masters were feeling their grip on the population weakening.

With all other avenues exhausted and religion unavailable to them, they had chosen Japan as a focal point for the Chinese people’s anger. They dredged up atrocities that had happened generations ago and skillfully transformed a group of useless islands into a beacon of national pride. All the while arrogantly believing that they could control the carefully cultivated rage of a billion human beings.

He scanned the street out front again, finally letting his gaze settle on a small Honda parked parallel to the curb. It looked almost laughably normal—Japan’s most common car in Japan’s most common color. Neither old nor new, neither clean nor dirty, it might as well have been invisible.

Within that mundane exterior, though, it was really quite remarkable. Six kilos of crudely formulated but still potent plastic explosive were hidden inside the driver’s-side door. The body had been cleverly reinforced with steel plate in order to channel and amplify the power of the blast into a force that its Chinese designer struggled to describe without invoking the frowned-upon concept of God.

No mistakes would be tolerated. No chances taken. General Masao Takahashi wouldn’t be injured or even killed. He would be vaporized.

A text popped up on the phone in front of him and he took a casual sip of his coffee as he looked down at it. Three minutes.