Chapter 5: George Yossarian: Welcoming Tokyo

As the plane touched down on Tokyo soil, a wave of nostalgia mixed with anticipation swept over me. I've visited the city before, but this time, I wasn't an operative pretending to be an investigative journalist—I was simply an investigative journalist.

Tokyo is a great city to be a spy in. People wear masks, CCTVs are rare, and computer tech is often outdated by two decades, making breaching it effortless. The first time I visited Japan, I had to quickly finish learning the language, ethics, and cultural code, all in preparation for a mission that never came.

My cover work as an investigative journalist was a bit too effective in helping police crack a corruption case, and the bureau decided I had gathered too much attention to execute the operation, the details of which I didn't know.

This time, I had to lay low. I resisted the urge to plunge directly into the investigation. Maintaining my cover as a journalist-turned-exotic blogger was crucial—the best cover is the one that’s real.

During the first two days, I found an apartment in an older building to rent for cheap. After setting up my temporary base, I planned actions for both of my roles.

I started blogging to fill my war chest and maintain my cover. I interviewed locals, asking about their views on recent events, their political opinions, and controversies that hadn't yet touched the Far East. Three 60-second quick bits of content each day did the trick of offsetting some of my expenses. Once, I tried to ask about Tingal; the Japanese knew very little of the conflict I was filming, and they didn't care. Elections were ahead, so I ended up asking questions about politics, because that was what earned the most views.

I aimed to appear as just another foreigner, ensnared by Tokyo's charm and Japanese culture. With a medical mask on my face and a T-shirt with a ‘cool’ kanji symbol, I was just one of the millions of foreigners who visited the city every year. I felt stupid doing all that, but everything was better than having to sit in a boring internal intelligence office marking terrorists for the government to not arrest them.

Next, I have decided to conduct an outside surveillance of points of interest. I wasn’t reckless to jump in without preparation. I collected my kit—a hand cream to prevent leaving fingerprints, dark-contact lenses, a wig, and lockpicks.

I kicked off with the 'yellow dots'—locations the victims were known to frequent. I studied schools, offices, and karaoke bars from a distance, striving to discern any patterns or commonalities that might serve as clues. It proved challenging, like seeking a needle in a haystack. Nothing stood out at first glance.

Next, I focused on the residential areas, the 'blue dots' on my map. The landscape teemed with houses, some inhabited, others eerily silent. Many of the NEETs and salarymen lived in now-vacant houses, silent witnesses to Japan's declining population and cultural preference for new homes. Most of them died over a year ago, and there weren’t many traces.

The prodigies' homes nestled mostly in middle to upper-middle-class neighborhoods, each distinguished by similar features: polished exteriors, doors with cameras, and tasteful décor. Tree pots shaded pedestrians along the streets. Some homes were easy to find on sale in real estate agencies.

Finally, I visited the 'red dots,' the accident sites. The absence of CCTV footage was confirmed, affirming my suspicions. Only one CCTV camera was visible in one of the places of the incident — outside a local grocery shop.

I took time to prepare my devices to infect the network if there was one and entered. Taking out my phone, I identified the Wi-Fi network by signal strength while walking through the shop to buy pre-made food. Slowly, my laptop’s fans concealed in my backpack were humming, as it was trying to barge in into the ancient router, to infect the devices inside. The security protocol was twenty years old, and it took a few minutes to break in.

Notification on my phone: "Done."

I grabbed some rice sandwiches with tuna and headed for the metro. On the way, I reviewed their files on the ancient Windows XP PC that was handling their cameras — all footage from the day of the accident and before was missing. Records from the next day remained, but nothing stood out.

Police don't delete files, only copy them, so it was either someone like me who used a backdoor or local enforcement.

This was getting too exciting, so I decided to stay under the radar and plan before acting. I sent an email to one of the top-tier schools, "Tokugawa Elite Academy," posing as a representative from a prominent international school rating agency GHSR. I told them that our agency planned to extend its coverage to East Asia and that we were particularly interested in evaluating their prestigious institution.

In the meantime, I reverted to my cover, passing my days as a photographer making pictures around town and in the areas of interest. The puzzle pieces slowly started aligning, but I needed to play the part and bide my time.

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As my first week wrapped up, the harsh reality of Tokyo prices dawned on me. The city was expensive, and I needed to start making ends meet. Photography wasn't earning much, and I had already taken all the pictures of the areas of interest I needed. It was time to elevate my investigation and up the game. Otherwise, in 60 days, I would only have enough for a ticket home to take the MI desk job.

With my Japanese language proficiency up to snuff, I started frequenting the bars the salaryman targets often visited. Their social media accounts had served as breadcrumbs, leading me to these locales. These weren't the touristy spots often recommended to foreigners, but local haunts where the city's office workers loosened their ties and found respite from the daily grind.

I landed a gig at one such establishment. The role was simple – bartending, with a bit of table waiting on the side.

In secret intelligence, you learn a few trades to blend in, from first aid, lockpicking, and forgery to crafting explosives. As I was meant for friendly countries due to my journalistic education and background, I never learned how to make bombs or use long-range weapons, but I picked up bartending. The person who trained me said something like:

"You should understand the difference between tastes and types of alcohol. Depending on it, a person will either whine to you for hours, or share his grandiose plans without shutting his mouth."

This was the second time I have used bartending skills for information in Tokyo. That time I aided another agent to loosen up some officials. Tingalese rebels were very strict with alcohol on the frontlines.

Working the bar felt like having a ringside seat to the daily lives of these ordinary men, not unlike the targets I was investigating. Shared drinks and late-night confessions helped me grasp the rhythm of their lives and their daily routines.

My days morphed into a cycle of pouring drinks, listening to the regulars' stories, and discreetly probing about the disappeared. People were eager to chat, perhaps because I was a foreigner who was physically attractive and should not be judging, but most likely it was because of the alcohol I spiced slightly.

I was not a person here after all. I was a role. Their stories painted a vivid picture of the lives these victims led before their abrupt disappearances. I knew how victims' friends look on social networks.

At the end of each day, I returned to my temporary home to check the web for any mentions of pedestrian-involved accidents. I was tired but content, knowing progress was being made. It was slow work, but the stakes were too high to rush if these accidents were staged by the Japanese secret services. I needed to be careful, meticulous, and patient. After all, the truth was worth the wait. At least I hoped so.

An attractive woman who was in the pictures with one of the salarymen in the park was usually staying later than her colleagues and drinking after they left. She was sometimes the last client, and we talked a bit. She gave her surname: Nakamura.

One could argue that for a barman listening to clients ranting is more important than making cocktails. I rarely spoke, only nodded, sometimes asking clarifying questions. I was there to listen to her colleagues and her after all. So, in a week I became her outlet for talking. It made sense: for I was a handsome gentleman, while she was getting slightly spiked alcohol, which made people want to talk even more.

It was Friday evening, and I was pouring her the last drink before the bar closed when she mentioned Kenta, the man in the pictures she was with, hit by a truck a couple of months prior. She described him as the kindest man alive. As a true heartless bastard, I continued to pull information out of her.

I learned that she'd been in love with him, that she confessed, but he rejected her for no apparent reason. At least from her perspective, there was no reason, and the man was distancing himself in the last few months of his life.

Despite that, she was furious at the injustice that took him away. Mad at the municipality that arranged his cremation and funeral, pushing it to the front of the line and completing it within three days, so she was not able to say her goodbyes.

"Jackpot!" I thought to myself. I shifted the discussion to another topic, and in a few minutes helped her into a taxi. I even made myself a celebratory vodka martini before heading out. It was shaken, not stirred of course.

On my way home I did a quick search on the web. Considering the extensive wait times due to overburdened crematoriums, it was an outlier I could not ignore. I hadn't voiced that while I was pouring her another drink at the bar.

Why would a municipality assume the extra burden of organizing a funeral and then fast-track it? It didn't add up. My thoughts had returned to my map, the labyrinth of red, blue, and yellow dots that had become my compass in this investigation.

Under the glow of a desk lamp at my shelter, I put different layers on the map. Average income, different crime rates, political control, voting patterns, and other demographic data.

It clicked! Well, maybe it clicked.

All blue dots: the places where targets lived fell into three distinct areas, all governed by The Last Hope - a new green activist party.

My next call was to Josh. He'd been a reliable source back in the west, and I asked him to dig into the party, to scrutinize their funding and any connections they might have. Meanwhile, I put on hold pursuing the lead that had me most intrigued: the unusually swift cremation process.

In Tokyo, the wait time for cremation services was almost a week. Had all the victims been funneled to the same crematorium, or was that the quickest available option used each time? And how could I gain access to such sensitive information without blowing my cover or attracting attention? Was this is one-time anomaly or a pattern?

I had to be sure before I proceeded with this line of investigation.