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The Company
Time: Friday, December 16, 2011 (evening).
Place: Tokyo, Japan.
Last Event: Renting a cozy restaurant, complete with vermin.
The Agents decide not to check out of their hotel when they shift their base across town to the rented restaurant. Ducking out and leaving the tab running might even help obscure their trail. Of course, the team must relocate subtly for that to work – it wouldn't do to stroll out the front door, bags in hand! Since Asuka is safely under Anabel and Zhang's protection at the restaurant, it makes sense for those three to stay put. Vinnie calls ahead, informs Jili, Qoqa, and Wen that he's on his way, and tells them to get ready to move. Then he drives back to the hotel, taking great care not to pick up a tail.
On arriving, Vinnie sneaks upstairs to help Jili and Wen carry their possessions – the computers and forgery equipment in particular – down to the car. Wen is able to walk on her own, albeit slowly. The three slip down to the garage undetected, leaving Qoqa to pack everybody else's gear. Vinnie drives back to the restaurant, again keeping his eyes peeled for pursuers. As far as he can tell, however, he didn't attract any unwanted attention. After dropping off Jili, Wen, and their bags with Anabel and Zhang, Vinnie heads back to make his second shuttle run.
While Vinnie is playing chauffeur, Qoqa moves from hotel room to hotel room like a ghost. At each stop, she packs whatever personal possessions she finds and then "cleans" the room behind her. Qoqa is extremely proficient at such work; by the time Vinnie returns, the rooms are spotless and the Agents' belongings are efficiently stowed in suitcases. Vinnie and Qoqa load the car – once again, as stealthily as possible – and get on the road. As always, Vinnie drives carefully and makes sure he isn't followed.
By the time the whole crew is reunited at the restaurant, it's very late. Everybody is about ready to get some sleep when Asuka starts crying. At first it seems that she's just upset that her presence has become a magnet for violence, and specifically that the Agents have had to risk death for her. Qoqa tries to console Asuka, explaining that exhaustion is a normal response to danger – as she points out, even the supremely confident Zhang has been kind of bummed and sullen this evening. However, it soon comes out that the tears aren't motivated by guilt over what has happened, but by the shame of having not told the entire truth.
When Qoqa pries, Asuka explains that she doesn't think that the forces battling for control of Toru's empire are after the crime lord's smuggling or vice operations – drugs, girls, and so on – but something else. Pushed to say more, Asuka theorizes that it all has to do with a mysterious "Mr. Sakata." Sakata is a scientist of some sort with whom Asuka saw Toru meet a few times back in 2004, when she was barely a teenager. Toru made no effort to shoo off Asuka, but she cannot recall what Toru and Sakata discussed. All she can say for certain is that Toru bankrolled Sakata with Yakuza funds and kept this a secret from the rest of his mob.
This piques the Agents' interest. Over the course of the next hour, they grill Asuka for details. Asuka has little more to volunteer, however, other than that she thinks Sakata's field is "econometrics." Armed with this information, such as it is, Anabel and Jili go off to do what research they can with a couple of smart phones. Qoqa sits with Asuka and attempts to help her deal with her feelings of guilt. The others get some rest.
A few hours later, Anabel and Jili rouse everybody to share what they've learned. It isn't much, but it's a start. Anabel says that a Japanese businessman by the name of Sakata was the subject of an SEC inquiry in 2004. He was running a high-tech business in Silicon Valley when he came under investigation for stock-fixing. While the eventual findings were mixed and didn't lead to a criminal conviction, the charges resulted in Sakata having his visa revoked and being ejected from the United States. Asuka identifies the man pictured in the old news item as being the same Sakata.
Jili dug even further back and discovered that in 1999, a Japanese national named Sakata made waves at UCLA, where he was teaching econometrics. The university fired him for "misappropriation of departmental resources" and "suspicion of embezzlement." Sakata reached a private settlement with UCLA and avoided criminal charges. As a result, he was able to remain in the United States – although Jili couldn't find out where he went after UCLA. Details such as photos and academic credentials confirm that this is the same Sakata that Anabel found.
When Jili hears Anabel's findings, she snaps her fingers and resumes talking. Reading between the lines, she feels that the report on the UCLA incident suggests a digital crime rather than standard "sleazy professor" activities such as plagiarism, selling grades, and harassing students and research assistants. Without giving details, she hints that she might have done something similar once. She then points out that Sakata's now-defunct Silicon Valley outfit was developing real-time financial monitoring systems – and that American officials ejected Sakata and took possession of company assets rather than charging him with anything. She's convinced that the man was involved in a conspiracy to hack into banks or stock markets, and that the government froze his corporate assets to take control of them!
Jili's associates aren't as convinced but conclude that since the group has to check in with Chaturvedi anyway, they might as well do so tonight and add this information, just in case. Anabel calls Chaturvedi and puts him on speaker, and the Agents brief him on recent events. When Anabel mentions Sakata, Chaturvedi admits that he, too, used to work in econometrics, but that Sakata doesn't ring any bells. As Jili and Anabel fill in more details, though, Chaturvedi recalls the name from some controversial papers back in the late 1990s. In Chaturvedi's words, "Sakata was a crank with gloom-and-doom theories regarding digital marketplaces. They would have been volatile stuff, had they been remotely plausible . . . which they weren't."
Given Sakata's crank status and the fact that Asuka only just now – in a fit of tears, no less – saw fit to share her vague memories of Toru making a secret side deal with the man, Chaturvedi is dismissive. He points out that Asuka's legal team never once mentioned Sakata in any context, and expresses serious doubts about a connection. However, he promises that he'll dig around a bit it if that would help Asuka avoid a nervous breakdown. He concludes the phone call by reminding the Agents that the other four members of their team will be arriving tomorrow.
The Agents discuss the Sakata angle a bit before getting some sleep. Consensus is that if Jili's theory is true, and American officials took an unhealthy interest in Sakata's work, then the CIA would be handling the matter overseas. Toru was selling information to the CIA, after all – that's how the CIA got the jump on the Company in Canada – so it may follow that he was brokering a deal involving silencing Sakata, selling his work, smuggling him out of Japan, or something similar. If so, then it's likely that Toru would have kept Sakata under wraps as insurance, meaning that Toru's sudden assassination by the Company would have compromised the CIA's access to Sakata, forcing them to seize control of Toru's empire by any means possible.
Saturday morning comes without incident. The Agents decide that it would be wise to do some more research on Sakata, and Vinnie drives Anabel and Jili off to find a suitable university library. The others remain at the old restaurant. Wen is feeling a little better, but Qoqa keeps an eye on her while cleaning the place up. And it's a much-needed cleaning – to hear Anabel tell it, roaches practically tried to eat her overnight. Zhang stays alert for trouble, keeping his eyes on the street and the alley, his ears open for the sound of intruders.
The day is largely boring for everyone. Those at the restaurant hang around in less-than-pleasant surrounds, keeping a low profile and staying out of Qoqa's way as she cleans. The Agents at the library spend hours and hours poring over digital, microform, and paper records that are by turns banal, hopelessly abstruse, and completely off-topic. On the other hand, boring is a welcome break from car wrecks, poison spray, nerve toxins, and firebombs. Vinnie, Jili, and Anabel return toward evening, with Vinnie once again taking great pains to avoid being followed. Over dinner, Anabel and Jili share what they discovered.
Anabel explains that after reading several of Sakata's journal articles and skimming many more, she found the ones that sounded the most "cranky" and made copies. The Agents pass these around but for the most part can make little sense of them. However, Wen surprises her associates by finding a common theme: Sakata has a mathematical model that supposedly predicts the frequency and severity of major financial disasters as a function of the degree of automation in the global market. Among his premises is that the digital security in physical marketplaces – computer systems intended to keep banks and stock exchanges on an even keel – is the inherent danger. His assertions are entirely mathematical in nature, with minimal social considerations and no names.
The Agents agree that this sounds wild, but that it's quite possibly the public face of more-sinister work. If Sakata's theory is truly predictive, and based on an insiders' understanding of hardware and software systems, then it might not be entirely harmless. Someone like Toru would see the promise of easy money in this, while an organization like the CIA would doubtless view it as a strategic weapon of sorts. And if the latter group had been relying on Toru to handle Sakata at a safe distance, they might now be hunting for Sakata with about as much zeal as they would muster for misplaced nukes or anthrax. It would make sense for them to try to abduct Asuka for interrogation.
Jili found only one new fact of any real interest: About a month after Sakata returned to Japan in 2004, after the SEC investigation had cost him his visa, he was killed in a car wreck on his way to Sendai. He lost control of his vehicle, which went over a cliff, crashed on the rocks below, and caught fire. This happened along such a remote stretch of highway that by the time help arrived, Sakata was burned beyond recognition. News reports at the time made a point of mentioning that the "disgraced professor" was driving an extremely expensive sports car that someone in his position couldn't possibly have afforded.
Jili opines that this feels like a setup to her: "I'm a hacker myself. If I wanted to go off the grid for something big, I'd fake my death, too. Nobody is going to be looking for this guy now!" She adds that someone as knowledgeable as Sakata wouldn't be dumb enough to throw away his advantage by going back on the grid. She expresses extreme doubt that he would do anything that would leave a trail. And she points out that if Toru helped Sakata disappear, it may be that the CIA fell for it and that Toru was making a deal to sell them the "dead" researcher's work just before the Agents assassinated him.
This discussion is interrupted by Anabel's phone: It's Hamid. He, Klas, Lev, and Paul just landed at Narita. Anabel selects a safe meeting place away from the airport and tells Hamid that Vinnie will pick up the four Agents there. She warns that there's reason to suspect professional shadows, so it would be prudent to take an indirect route, just in case. Hamid acknowledges this and hangs up.
Vinnie jumps in the car and drives to the café that Anabel picked out, keeping an eye out for trouble. He gets there shortly after Hamid, Klas, Lev, and Paul. Paul tells Vinnie that they didn't spot anybody suspicious at Narita, but that they took maximum precautions getting here just the same. With that, all five men get in the car and head back. Everybody is on the alert for tails – something that Klas and Paul are exceptionally skilled at – but nobody spots trouble. It's fairly late when Vinnie pulls in behind the restaurant.
With the whole team reunited, the Agents grab a late-night meal together. Paul hands out small-but-welcome gifts to all, among them a monstrous bag of Skittles for Wen and a bottle of good vodka for Qoqa. Over food and drink, the Tokyo crew fill in the new arrivals on what has been going on – and what might be going on, if Asuka's memory is to be trusted. Lev, especially, is taken aback at the escalation from "minor mob skirmish over who will inherit a dead gangster's money" to "bloody war between covert operators with national backing." Everybody agrees that it would be prudent to get hold of some hardware and seize the initiative before it's too late.