Free Girl in a Box by Sujata Massey Page B

that.” Now that I was fully awake, the fact that I’d agreed to leave for Japan in a few hours stunned me.
    â€œDon’t worry about the apartment, I’ll keep the rent payments going. After I get things set with the travel agent, I’ll run by the post office and pick up the paperwork to get your mail forwarded to the office. You can sign on the way to the airport.”
    â€œThank you,” I said to Michael, but he was no longer looking at my legs, or any part of me. He was on his cell phone to the travel agent, asking about a plane to Tokyo.
    Â 
    â€œI wish I could have said good-bye to Taki-san,” I fretted. I was in the passenger seat of Michael’s Audi. Blue Merle was crooning “Burning in the Sun” from the Bose speakers, and the sun in fact had come out during our last few minutes on the Dulles Toll Road. I’d finished reading the file on the man everyone called Tyler Farraday, which had struck me as more pathetic than insightful. He’d worked a few places around town as a male model; and on an accessories shoot for Mitsutan, he had attempted to get the photography director to introduce him to the big honchos in corporate. That kind of thing just wasn’t done, and as Tyler had made some outrageous attempts to make himself visible to store management, he’d wound up getting cut out of the ad campaign. He’d been doing cocaine in the men’s room at Gas Panic the last time anyone had seen him alive. The Tokyo police had ruled his death a drowning, which was the story I’d read in the papers; but a CIA medical officer who’d performed the autopsy, once the body had been returned to Virginia, confirmed that Farraday had received so many physical blows that he was very likely dead before he touched the water.
    â€œMrs. Taki did give you her best regards by phone. She was very pleased that the application succeeded,” Michael said, bringing me back from the gruesome past to the present.
    â€œIt all happened so quickly,” I said. “Everything, from the application to the packing. Thanks for helping me again.”
    â€œNo problem,” Michael said. “You’ve got both passports, right?”
    â€œI double-checked. The American one is in my carry-on and the Japanese one in the suitcase.” The bright red Japanese passport was a forgery, a document giving details of the birth of Rei Shimura on the same day in September that I was born—but seven years later. I also had a new address book in the carry-on, a book that was practically bare but did contain the names of my supposed parents and our family address, an apartment in a good building in the upscale Hiroo section of southwest Tokyo. I’d already memorized the facts about my father: he was an investment banker, frequently out of the country; in fact, he’d brought my mother and me to California for many of my school years. My mother was a housewife who enjoyed making shopping expeditions wherever her husband worked. I’d grown up in a culture of international shopping—which was one of the reasons I’d always wanted to work in a department store.
    So many things to remember! I pushed them to the back of my mind as Michael turned into the airport parking lot and started cruising to find a spot.
    â€œWhy don’t you drop me on the sidewalk outside the terminal? It’ll save time.” I was jumpy, because the flight departure time was an hour and a half away, and who knew if the check-in people would pull rank on me for not being on the scene two hours before my international flight? Stranger things had happened to me in airports.
    â€œOkay.” Michael said reluctantly. “I’ll say good-bye to you now, and good luck, but I’ll meet you at the departure gate.”
    â€œBut you don’t have a boarding pass. They won’t let you through.” I looked at him, utterly confused.
    â€œMy name is on a list of people