Six Four (19 page)

They were probably arguing. The joint motion wouldn’t pass so easily.
The protest has to go direct to the captain.
The hard-liners would persist in their opinion to the end. The talks would come to nothing; it would be down to a vote. There were thirteen outlets in total, meaning they required only seven to vote for leaving the protest with Ishii.

There was a chance they could pull it off.

But they were late out. They should have reached their decision by now.

Mikami was no less concerned than Ishii. Various undesirable
outcomes were flashing through his mind. With the progress of time, doubts had begun to surface. Had Suwa actually managed to win Utsuki from the
Mainichi
over to their side? Had he really turned the vote? Had Kuramae managed to spread the bait concerning the bid-rigging charges? Perhaps it was his fault. Had he somehow failed in his attempt to tame Akikawa?

He didn’t think so. Azusa had bitten when Mikami had given him the inside information on the bid-rigging.

Happy to do business with you.

Akikawa should be under control. He could strut around, projecting the image of the perfect reporter, but he was still just a cog in a larger machine. He couldn’t turn his back on an order from one of the paper’s senior editors. While it was unlikely he would actually support leaving the protest somewhere else – not in front of the others – he could no longer advocate lodging the protest with the captain.

It all hinged on the
Asahi
and
Kyodo News
. Perhaps on Ushiyama from the
Yomiuri
, who had a personal grudge against Akikawa. Might he have seen Akikawa’s about-turn and, deciding now was the time, changed his mind just to be perverse?

It was now after four thirty.

The stillness rang in their ears.

Four thirty-five . . . four forty . . .

They all turned to look at the door together.
Footsteps
. And not just one or two sets. Mikami was ahead as he flew out of the room. Something like ten reporters were already there, gathered in the corridor. They continued to flood out of the Press Room, the flow pushing the group in the direction of the stairs. Mikami glimpsed Akikawa’s face in the crowd. He saw Mikami and walked over. As though on cue, the reporters stopped talking and turned to face Mikami. Mikami searched Akikawa’s eyes.

Which is it?

Akikawa answered him flatly.

‘We intend to take our protest to the captain, right now.’

Mikami went rigid. He heard someone suck in a breath behind him.

They’d lost.

He sensed all the strength draining from his body. It felt as though they’d hit him, as though they’d decimated a sandcastle he’d toiled over for a whole day so that not a trace remained.

Akikawa’s face drew close. He whispered something in Mikami’s ear.

‘Azusa’s going back to Tokyo next week; he’s got a bad liver. He seemed grateful for his parting gift. Wanted me to pass on his regards.’

His smirking face pulled away again.

Mikami’s eyes were open wide. He’d been played.

Happy to do business with you.

A parting gift. Azusa had never intended to pay his due.

In waves, the reporters began to move towards the stairs. Akikawa disappeared back into the crowd.

Wait!

Mikami had meant to shout, but his voice had deserted him. His vision was failing. His knees buckled, causing him to stumble. He felt something catch him around the waist. One of his hands shot up and caught Mikumo by the shoulder.

‘Sir, are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You need to sit down.’

Her voice sounded an age away. His head was swaying back and forth. He rubbed his palm over his eyes, trying to regain his vision.

Hey . . . hey . . . hey!

Shouting, like a broken record. Ishii. He was running after the reporters.

‘Stop, you can’t . . . not all of you!’ Suwa yelled.

Someone screamed right back. ‘The vote was unanimous – what else do you expect us to do?’

Mikami brushed Mikumo’s hand away.
Unanimous? But that was impossible.
Still hunched in on himself, he began to stagger forwards. He strained his eyes, the light slowly returning, and forced himself to chase after the reporters, on half-numb legs. Mikumo tried to restrain him. Again, he brushed her away.

He was approaching the stairs. He grabbed at the clothes of one of the reporters up ahead and ploughed on through; he grabbed again. He looked up. Kuroyama. Had the ones at the front already reached the first-floor corridor?

I will not let you do this.

He passed the
Mainichi
’s Utsuki. Caught up with Yamashina from the
Times
.

‘M–Mikami?’

He pawed on past the man’s apologetic face. Then past another, and another.
Move, move, move!
He emerged on to the first-floor corridor. At the front, he saw a number of people breach the entrance to the Secretariat. He ran. He could run. He sprinted as fast as he could, breaking through to the front. He crashed into the office. Five, maybe six of the reporters were already inside. Immediately, he saw that the lamp to the captain’s office was lit. The captain was still there.

The Secretariat staff were quick to react, a number of them rushing over to blockade the door. It was the moment in which the soft-mannered, suit-wearing, dignified men transformed back into officers of the law. Mikami heard something smash. Aiko Toda was rooted to the spot, having dropped her mug on to her desk.

Mikami pushed his way between the division staff and the press. Akikawa’s face was right before his eyes. More than twenty reporters were pushing up from behind.

Everything would be over if they got through.

Mikami stretched his arms out to either side, blocking their path. At first he couldn’t speak. He was breathing heavily, his spit dry and sticking to the inside of his throat. He dug his feet in and
stared menacingly at the press, and that was when he noticed something odd out of the corner of his eye. Futawatari. He was on one of the couches towards the middle of the room. His eyes were anchored on Mikami.
Those eyes
. Eyes like black pits, all the emotion suppressed. It had lasted only a moment. Futawatari looked suddenly away; he got to his feet and turned away. Threading through the reporters, he walked to the exit and disappeared soundlessly into the corridor.

Bastard’s escaping the spray.

‘Mikami.’

His head span back to face the press.

‘You need to move,’ Akikawa said in a low voice. He was holding a sheet of paper, folded in two. The written protest.

‘You go in by yourself,’ Mikami said, forcing a whisper.

Akikawa levelled Mikami with a challenging stare. ‘The decision was unanimous. We’re all making the protest together.’

‘You’ve lost our trust, Mikami,’ Tejima raised his voice at Akikawa’s side. ‘How are we to know you won’t find a way to punish him if he goes in by himself?’

‘Keep your bloody voice down.’

Mikami was beside himself; it felt as though the door might open behind him at any minute.

‘The representative goes in – that’s final. I won’t permit anything else.’

The throng of reporters reacted violently.

‘That’s absurd. Isn’t it true that our taxes paid for that room and its thick carpet? There isn’t anywhere that’s off limits.’

‘Enough! This is a government office; nobody is going in without my permission,’ Mikami bellowed over him.

‘We don’t have to listen to this. Let’s get in there!’

At the order, the crowd began to move. Akikawa stumbled as the swell sent him careering into Mikami’s chest.

‘Don’t you dare!’

He used both hands to shove them back. He felt hands pressing
against him from behind. Suwa and the rest of the staff were driving him forwards. Akikawa was in the same position. Hardly able to move, the two men struggled as they were pushed together. They touched cheeks. Their faces were flattened.

‘Give it up!’

‘Get out of the way!’

Akikawa’s gums were on show. One arm had come up at an angle, the elbow digging into Mikami’s neck. He moved to grab the man’s wrist and pull it away. He missed, and his hand sailed through empty air before it caught hold of something else. There was a nasty ripping sound. He had the sheet of white paper in his hand.

It was in Akikawa’s, too.

The document had been torn in half.

A stillness descended over the room. Mikami felt the pressure on his back ease then fall away completely. The same was true for Akikawa. Mikami’s eyes said the words.
That wasn’t on purpose.
He didn’t say it out loud. He had no choice but to leave the decision on how to act to Akikawa, and the twenty-plus reporters there with him.

‘That was . . .,’ someone said weakly. It was Ishii.
That was beyond our control.
Again, Ishii.

Akikawa was staring, half dazed, at the scrap of paper in his hand. His eyes came around to look at Mikami. He made a show of scrunching the paper into a ball and throwing it on the carpet. His voice rang out across the room, dripping with menace.

‘As of this moment, the Press Club foreswears all previous association with the Prefectural HQ. I propose we boycott all coverage of the commissioner’s visit next week.’

The news was showing on the muted TV set, marking the end of another day. Mikami was lying down in the living room at home, vacantly watching the screen. They had hardly spoken.
That sense of failure. Humiliation. The thirst for retribution. Regret.
Unable to process fully the entire array of his emotions during the drive home, Mikami had brought them into the house.

His brain still felt numb.

Akikawa’s explosive remark had become the consensus. After the chaos, the press had convened an emergency meeting and formally ratified their boycott of the commissioner’s visit.

Ishii had been prostrate on the floor as Akama shouted at Mikami, his anger greater than anything Mikami had seen before.
What on earth do you think you’re doing? It’s unfortunate that we have such an incompetent press director.
But he’d stopped short of discharging Mikami from his duties. His actions had, at the end of the day, prevented the reporters from protesting directly to the station captain. Akama had interpreted the destruction of the document as a spur-of-the-moment decision, not as an accident. What had been a barbarous act in the eyes of the press had been credited as a lucky break in the eyes of the force, and this had mitigated in part the full weight of Mikami’s sins.

Hierarchy . . .

The reflection felt like it had come late. It wasn’t just the protest that was on his mind. Why hadn’t Captain Tsujiuchi come out of his office? There had only been a door between them. He
must have heard the commotion. And Mikami doubted he’d have hidden, scared, behind his desk. He’d probably decided to ignore them. Whatever happened outside his office wasn’t his concern. Just another commotion in the provinces. He would have appeared untroubled, happy in his conviction. But how was he able to do that? It was because the captain’s office was more than just another room in the Prefectural HQ. It was Tokyo; it was the National Police Agency.

The Prefecture D Police had been diligent in their cultivation of the man’s near-divine status. They reported favourable information and insulated him from everything that wasn’t good news. They devoted themselves to ensuring that his time in the Prefectural HQ was spent in comfort. He was kept free from germs, sheltered from the troubles and worries of the local police, treated instead like a guest at a spa, and when he returned to Tokyo it would be with pockets full of expensive gifts from local companies.
I enjoyed my time here, surrounded by the warmth of the local community and the officers serving it.
They would feel relief as he recited the formulaic words during his departing speech, then, hardly leaving time for them to gather breath, they would begin to gather information on the personality and interests of the incoming captain.

Mikami lit a cigarette.

They’d made him a part of it. No, he’d made the decision himself. He’d considered every option, used behind-the-scenes tactics with the press, then finally deployed himself as a physical barrier, and all to protect this visitor from above the clouds. It felt as though he’d put himself beyond the point of no return. He’d let himself become a guard dog for Administrative Affairs, both in name and in deed. True to the role, he’d bared his fangs to protect the captain. It was fact; he knew he had to come to terms with it. At the same time, he knew he’d be little more than a failure if he gave up now, with the press mocking him, Akama trampling over him.

Futawatari’s expression still hung in his vision.

What had he thought, seeing the young reporters storm around Mikami? Had he laughed at the shame of it? Had he sympathized? Or had he taken a mental note, filing the incident away to use in his performance evaluations?

He had slipped away from the scene. Had he been afraid of getting dragged into the melee? Or had he left having decided it wasn’t his concern? Perhaps it simply meant the best way to succeed in Administrative Affairs was to be quick to realize – and expedite yourself away from – any potential danger.

Still . . .

The time would come when they would clash. They were moving on the same board.
Six Four. The Koda memo.
Both were fraught with danger. They would bring the two men into conflict, whether they liked it or not. It was an uneven fight. The game was already in motion and yet Mikami was still in the dark as to its nature. He didn’t even know if Futawatari was a partner or an opponent. It was only clear that they would clash. That the fight would be bloody. Mikami could feel it, the certainty there in his gut.

He checked the calendar on the wall. Akama had given him a list of instructions to follow. He was to treat the weekend as a cooling-off period and avoid all contact with the press. He was to work instead on the job he’d been forced to shelve: convincing Yoshio Amamiya to receive the commissioner’s visit. Early in the following week, at a round-table meeting scheduled for the ninth, he was personally to outline the process leading up to the ruckus surrounding the protest.