Free Rainfall by Barry Eisler Page A

our home in Japan does not represent a dividing line, then or now. I was an outsider in both places, and the move merely confirmed that status. Nor are any of my subsequent geographic ramblings particularly distinct. For a decade after Crazy Jake’s funeral I wandered the earth a mercenary, daring the gods to kill me but surviving because part of me was already dead.

    I was fighting alongside Lebanese Christians in Beirut when the CIA recruited me to train the Mujahideen guerrillas battling the Soviets in Afghanistan. I was perfect: combat experience, and a mercenary history that made possible maximum governmental deniability.

    For me, there has always been a war, and the time before feels unreal, dreamlike. War is the basis from which I approach everything else. War is all I really know. You know the Buddhist parable? “A monk awoke from a dream that he was a butterfly, then wondered whether he was a butterfly dreaming that he was a man.”

    At a little after eleven, I heard sounds of movement within Midori’s apartment. Footsteps, then running water, which I took to be a shower. She worked at night, I realized; of course she would be a late riser. Then, shortly before noon, I heard a closing exterior door and the mechanical click of a lock, and I knew she was finally on the move.

    I paid for the two espressos I had drunk and walked out onto Omotesando-dori, where I began to amble in the direction of JR Harajuku station. I wanted to get to the pedestrian overpass at Harajuku. This would give me a panoramic view, but it would also leave me exposed, so I wouldn’t be able to linger.

    The timing was good. I only had to wait on the overpass for a minute before I caught sight of her. She was approaching from the direction of her apartment building and made a right onto Omotesando-dori when she reached it. It was easy for me to follow her from there.

    Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, her dark eyes concealed by sunglasses. She was wearing snug black pants and a black V-necked sweater, and walked confidently, with purpose. I had to admit she looked good.

    Enough of that,
I told myself.
How she looks has nothing to do with this.

    She was carrying a shopping bag that I recognized from the distinctive maple color came from Mulberry, the English leather goods manufacturer. They had a store in Minami Aoyama, and I wondered if she was on her way to return something.

    Midway to Aoyama-dori she turned into Paul Stuart. I could have followed her in, tried for our chance meeting there, but I was curious about where else she was going, and decided to wait. I set up in the Fouchet Gallery across the street, where I admired several paintings that afforded me a view of the street until she emerged, a Paul Stuart shopping bag in hand, twenty minutes later.

    Her next stop was at Nicole Farhi London. This time I waited for her in the Aoyama Flower Market, on the ground floor of the La Mia building. From there, she continued onto a series of nameless Omotesando backstreets, periodically stopping to browse in one of the area’s boutiques, until she emerged onto Koto-dori, where she made a right. I followed her, staying back and on the opposite side of the street, until I saw her duck into Le Ciel Bleu.

    I turned into the Tokyo J. M. Weston shop, admiring the handmade shoes in the windows at an angle that afforded me a view of Le Ciel Bleu. I considered. Her taste was mostly European, it seemed. She eschewed the large stores, even the upscale ones. She seemed to be completing a circle that would take her back in the direction of her apartment. And she was carrying that Mulberry bag.

    If she was indeed on her way to return something, I had a chance to be there first. It was a risk because if I set up there and she went the other way, I would lose her. But if I could anticipate her and be waiting at her next stop before she got there, the encounter would seem more like chance and less like the result of being followed.

    I left the