Remote Control

  This book made available by the Internet Archive.

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  PART

  ONE

  THE BEGINNING

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  Haruko Higiichi

  Haruko Higuchi had arranged to meet Akira Hirano for lunch at a soba shop. Akira arrived late and, though they hadn't seen each other in four years, sat down without apologizing. "Some things never change," she said. Then, to the cook in his white smock behind the counter: "Two specials."

  The shop was in the basement of a building near Sendai Station occupied by an insurance company, at the end of a subterranean row of bars and restaurants. It was near the electronics company where Akira was employed, and the two of them had often come here for soba in the days when Haruko had worked there as well. It seemed like the right spot for their reunion.

  "Some things never change," Akira said again.

  "You're right. The menu is exactly the same. But they've got wasabi in a tube now instead of the fresh-grated stuff they used to serve."

  "1 meant you. Do you really have a kid?"

  "She's four years and nine months old."

  "Well, Tm three years and three hundred and thirty-nine months old," said Akira, keeping a straight face.

  "You can do that in your head? That's quite a talent."

  "Comes in handy in the dating world," she laughed.

  Dating! Haruko smiled at the memory of single life and studied Akira more closely. She was short and slender, her hair dyed brown and curled. Her eyelids were heavy, her lips full. She wore little makeup. Though it was chilly in Sendai in late November, she only had a black sweater on.

  "You know," Akira said, "1 always wanted to ask you what you thought of me when we worked together. We sat next to each other all that time. Did you think 1 was an idiot, never talking about anything but meri? You must

  THE BEGINNING

  have hated me. But you were always so polite. Was that just to keep me at a distance?"

  "I admired vou."

  "Don't be ridiculous."

  Though they were the same age, Haruko had envied Akira's energy, her constant, animated commentary on life—the cute salesman visiting the office, the idiosyncrasies of her current boyfriend, some sexy underwear she had discovered. "There was no discouraging you."

  "'No discouraging'? You make me sound like a cockroach," Akira said, lowering an eyebrow in mock offense.

  "1 always thought you were so cool. When your boyfriend called during work, you'd just tell the boss you wanted to take time off and leave—and the amazing thing was, no one held it against you."

  "Not that 1 did that every day."

  "Often enough!" Haruko laughed.

  "You just have to pick your spots. Know when you can get away with it."

  "Pick your spots. . . ."

  "But Tm always ready to leave early if something special comes up."

  "Okay, what if 1 call someday and tell you I'm getting divorced?"

  "Td be out the door in a flash."

  T hen maybe I'll do just that, Haruko Higuchi thought.

  T he restaurant, she noted, was not particularly crowded for noon on a weekday, and at first she wondered whether it might be struggling to keep afloat, but then she noticed a new flat-screen T V mounted high on one wall, the sort of thing you wouldn't buy if you were about to go out of business.

  T he TV was tuned to the noon news. It was a national broadcast, and yet the shot showed a local scene, the front of Sendai Station. Below the banner of the network, the sight of the familiar building was disconcerting, as though one's own home had suddenly shown up on the news. T he caption (jn the j)icture announced that Prime Minister Kaneda's motorcade was about to leave the station.

  "Sendai's caught Kaneda lever," Akira observed, glancing u|) at the screen, her chin j)roj)ped on her palm. "Iwerybody at our ollice went out to watch instead ol going to lunch."

  "The security is amazing. They've closed a lot ol ro.ids," said Haruko,

  REMOTE CONTROL

  remembering the police lines she'd seen on her way there. The men had been wearing padded armor, like baseball catchers, with "Miyagi Prefectural Police" across the chest.

  "I suppose the local bigwigs would be in trouble if anything happened to a popular new prime minister. A whole lot of trouble. . . ." Akira took one last look at the TV and turned her attention to the lunch that had just arrived.

  They talked about Akira's boyfriend as they ate their soba. They had met at a party; he was three years younger than her, a serious sort with a baby face, who was anxious to please no matter what she asked of him. "It's like I found this lamp—I just rub it and he pops out ready to do my bidding."

  "A genie."

  "But the best part is his name: Masakado! Like the shogun. I'm going out with Taira no Masakado! Lord of all Japan!"

  "And where does Lord Masakado work?"

  "That's sort of interesting, too," she said, her voice rising slightly, as though she'd suddenly realized something else to his credit. "Have you ever heard of a 'Securitv Pod'?"

  "Those things they've installed all over the city?"

  "The ones that look like R2-D2 from Star Wars.”

  "Are they really collecting information?" Haruko asked. They had been touted as a way to "promote public safety." But it was unclear what they were recording and who had access to the information.

  "According to Lord Masakado, it doesn't amount to much," Akira said. "He thinks satellites are more accurate and efficient. The pods basically take pictures in the area right around them and record cell phone transmissions. But we live in a surveillance societv, that's for sure."

  "So what's his role in all this?"

  "You might say he's in maintenance."

  "He maintains surveillance on society?"

  "Not exactly. He cleans the lenses. They go around in a van and check each pod, make repairs, wipe the lens. Pretty exciting, no?"

  "Any wedding plans?"

  "Wedding? Plans? Next question. But speaking of marriage, how's yours going?"

  "I'm not sure what to say."

  THE BEGINNING

  "Well, what about the kid? Boy or girl? Cute, I'm sure."

  "A girl. And cute—1 suppose." Haruko paused for a moment, resisting the urge to launch into a description of Nanami. "But, back to you, are you thinking of marrying Masakado?"

  .Akira stopped, a noodle suspended in mid-slurp between her chopsticks, and stared at Haruko. Then, after a moment, moving only her lips, she sucked up the rest of the noodle. "You only get one card at a time," she said at last.

  "1 don't follow."

  "Well, for example, when you're dealt the ten of spades, you have a problem—should you hold it or throw it in for another card? Tens are tricky that way. You might get a better card. In that sense, aces or fours are a lot easier to figure out."

  "So, Masakado is the ten of spades?" Haruko tried to imagine how the man would feel about the comparison. "I'll bet he's really a face card."

  "No, afraid not." She smiled and shook her head. "Though 1 would say he looks like a jack." Akira's affection for her boyfriend showed in the line of her smile. "But what about you?" she asked. "Did you settle for a face card on top of the deck? Stand pat when you were dealt your husband, game over?"

  "Well, he wasn't exactly the first card." Haruko grimaced. "T hough 1 guess he did turn up pretty early in the game."

  Akira slurped her soba more enthusiastically, as if enjoying these confidences. When she had finished another mouthful, she stuck a finger in the air. "T hat's right, you used to talk about a guy you dated in college—good-looking but tlakv."

  Haruko nodded, summoning uj) Masaharu Aoyagi's face in her he
ad. Akira's prying was like pulling the plug on a keg of wine, among a stack of them piled precaricjusly against a wall. Her memories of her time with Aoyagi began tkjoding back. She tumbled for the cork, her fingers slij)pery, and barely managed to push it back in the hole. 'I he torrent stopped, but bits of thitigs, like scraps ot |)hotographs, tumbled into view—glim|)ses of their earliest days at college, Aoyagi's boyish lace when they'd lust met, and later his stunned look when she'd announted she was leaving him.

  "Do you remember that dcHivery triuk driver who w.is in the news lor a while a couj)le ol years ago?" Haruko said eventually.

  REMOTE CONTROL

  Akira, finishing another bite of soba, looked puzzled for a moment but then stuck her finger in the air again. "I do. You mean the nice-looking guy who was all over the TV for catching a burglar? How could 1 forget that face? For a while there, Sendai had the hots for him like it has for Kaneda now. 1 suppose 1 got a pretty good case myself,” she admitted. "Good-looking but a bit rough around the edges. In the end, though, 1 could riever understand why people got so worked up about it all.”

  "Because the woman he rescued was a star,” Haruko said.

  "That's right. What was her name?”

  "1 don't remember anymore.”

  "Which is exactly my point,” Akira said, adding a little hot water to her bowl.

  Haruko shook her head. "1 suppose everything fades away eventually. The star's name, the truck driver, old boyfriends.”

  "Though they must go on doing something somewhere, even after we've forgotten them. . . . But where is that little girl of yours today?” she added.

  "At kindergarten.”

  Akira fixed her with a skeptical look. "Are you sure you didn't make her up?” She held Haruko's gaze for a moment before breaking into a smile.

  The TV screen was still filled with familiar buildings, scenes of downtown Sendai along the main street heading south from the prefectural offices and city hall. The sidewalks were jammed, despite the November cold. Haruko wondered where so many people could have come from, while life elsewhere in the city went on as usual. She remembered that someone had once told her that thirty percent of worker ants in a colony aren't actually working at any given moment. So the crowds here were that thirty percent, she decided.

  "They're that desperate to see the prime minister?” Akira said.

  "Maybe because he comes from Miyagi, they feel like they know him.”

  "Though no one around here paid much attention when he ran in the primaries. The governor all but laughed at him, said he was too young to have a chance. But once he became prime minister, they were just begging him to come back for a hometown parade.”

  "It does seem like a lot of fuss,” Haruko pointed out. "It's not as though he won Olympic gold.”

  "And he's already been in office six months. I suppose he was paying them

  THE BEGINNING

  back by delaying the parade until now." Her tone was cynical. "Serves them right for not backing him from the start."

  "There he is," murmured one of the customers behind Haruko. A car passed slowly from left to right across the screen. For a moment she thought it was snowing, but then realized they were throwing tickertape from the buildings along the route. There was something old-fashioned about the scraps of paper fluttering down on the parade. The festive mood of the crowd was unmistakable, and you could almost feel the anticipation as a patrol car cut across the screen, and then a long convertible came into view.

  "There he is, that's Kaneda," the man behind Haruko said. They couldn't hear much of the broadcast since the TV was mounted so high on the wall, but they could tell that an excited announcer was repeating the prime minister's name.

  He was seated in the back of the convertible, waving to the crowd. Fhe camera zoomed in for a close-up, revealing the face of a man who was still young—at fifty, the youngest prime minister in Japanese history. An unusually dignified face, with undeniable ciiarisma. Full eyebrows, a well-formed nose, piercing eyes, relaxed manner—he might easily have been mistaken for a movie star. A face that showed traces of innocence and experience in equal measure. The members of his own Liberal Party joked that his carelessly styled hair was still jet-black because he hadn't suffered enough, but his expression was subtle, notoriously difficult to read: were those slightly pursed lips smiling or bracing for the next challenge? Fhe slim woman seated next to him looked serene and well bred, and perhaps slightly cold.

  Akira pointed at the screen, addressing the man in the limousine. "We're counting on you," she said.

  Haruko remembered a debate she'd seen on FV between Kaneda and his opponent, the venerable Labor Party boss, Makoto Ayukawa. 1 hough Kaneda was said to have played rugby in college, he had looked slender, almost tleli-cate, next t(j the older man. His manner had been understated and respectful, but he had fixed Ayukawa with a sharp stare throughout the debate. When Ayukawa had accused him ol being young and overly idealistic, Kaneda had responded witiiout missing a beat: "1 got into politics because 1 w.mtc'd to turn ideals into realities."

  REMOTE CONTROL

  "My husband said it all along."

  "What?" asked Akira. "That he's lucky to be married to such a good-looker?"

  "No," Haruko laughed. "That too few politicians are ready to lay down their lives for the country."

  "He can say that again. They either die of old age or off themselves after a scandal."

  "He says Kaneda seems like one of the few who might," said Haruko.

  "He can say that again, too."

  At first, Haruko wasn't sure what she was seeing. As Kaneda's limousine crept across the screen, something white dropped into the picture—as though a curious bird had swooped down on the car . . . though the tail was too long for a bird. It was probably just a clump of tickertape, or so she thought.

  She still couldn't hear the announcer. The white object descended on the limousine.

  "Is that a toy plane?" someone murmured. Haruko wasn't sure whether it was Akira or someone behind her—or a voice in her own head.

  The camera caught the propellers spinning over the small body of a remote-controlled helicopter as it hovered for a moment above the car. Then the sound of an explosion filled the room, white smoke billowed across the screen, and the picture seemed to warp.

  For a moment, Haruko thought something had happened to the TV, but the picture quickly returned, showing the street through a veil of smoke and people fleeing in every direction. The pavement where the camera was focused seemed to be on fire.

  The silence in the soba shop was broken only by the hushed voice of the announcer saying, "A bomb! A bomb!"

  PART

  TWO

  THE AUDIENCE

  Day One

  Toru Tanaka dropped his head back on the pillow and gazed at his left leg on the bed below him. It had started to itch inside the cast, so he pulled himself up a bit and glanced around for the ear pick he used to scratch his leg.

  "Hey, Tanaka," said his roommate. "Looking for the pick?" The curtain down the middle of the room had been left open. The white-haired, slackmouthed man in the next bed had casts on both legs. His face was round, his eyes wide-set. Toru shook his head, annoyed at being so easy to read.

  The man, Yasushi Hodogaya, had been in the room when Toru arrived. Toru had only recently turned thirty-five, and this sixty-something roommate was old enough to be his father, but Hodogaya had decided they were going to be buddies, members of the "brotherhood of broken bones." Worse yet, he never missed an opportunity to play up his twofold injury, reminding Torn how much worse off he was having broken both legs.

  Annoying, too, was his habit of muttering insults at the TV screen while a chess program was on, as if he played better than the experts on the show. But Toru knew nothing about chess, so he had no way of knowing whether Hodogaya's criticism was justified.

  Fortunately, despite the casts, Hodogaya would often jump out of bed and leave the room on a pair of crutches, sometimes for long
periods. He seemed so mobile that Toru had to stop himself from asking when his roommate planned to check out.

  "Hey, Tanaka. You know who that was came to see me?" Hodogaya asked one day.

  "How should 1 know?" said Toru.

  THE AUDIENCE

  "You'd never believe me if 1 told you."

  "Then don't tell me."

  Hodogaya would have been approaching retirement if he had worked for a respectable company, and work might have been the last thing he'd have wanted to discuss. But, perhaps because his job seemed a bit shady, he was always anxious to talk about it. He told stories of his adventures in the underw^orld that were probably mostly bluster, claiming to be friendly with various thugs and yakuza bosses. But Torn had to admit that the men who came to visit him were pretty tough-looking, something Hodogaya took pleasure in pointing out.

  Now, as the pair of them lay in bed, someone appeared at the door of their room and knocked. It was the boy from the room next door, also on crutches.

  "What's up?" said Hodogaya.

  "Toru!" said the boy. "Did you see what happened? On TV?" It struck Toru as odd and a bit annoying to have a boy of middle school age calling him by his first name, but he had decided it was just his way of being friendly.

  "TV?" he said, looking over at the set on the table against the wall. He reached for the remote and switched it on. The hospital charged for TV privileges, but he had bought a prepaid card and earphones. "Seen what?"

  "What happefiedV said the boy. "At least we won't be bored in here for a while," he added, before disappearing as quickly as he'd come. Tbru wondered what all the fuss was about as a man with a solemn expression appeared on the screen. He was holding a microphone and had a bandage around his head. T he background looked familiar, until Torn realized it was right here in Sendai—along the main street dividing the city from north to south.

  "T hat's right," said Hodogaya from the next bed. "T he parade's today. Kane-da's coming, the new prime minister." Almost simultaneously Torn noticed the headline streaming across the bottom of the screen: "Prime Minister Kaneda assassinated by remcAe-controlled bomb." He grabbed the earphones and j)ut them on.