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The Company
Time: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 (pre-dawn).
Place: Sakata's lady friend's house, outside Kyoto, Japan.
Last Event: Proposing a faked death to Sakata.
In the sprawling, isolated home of Sakata's as-yet-unnamed companion – whom the Agents call "the Artist" when whispering among themselves – Anabel takes the lead in telling Sakata that the surest way to thwart American and Chinese black ops would be to convince the operators that he's dead, along with everyone else. This includes the Artist, her staff, Asuka, and the Agents. Anabel explains that such a ruse would require significant technical expertise and planning. The former would benefit from Sakata's leave to fetch Hamid and Vinnie from outside; the latter, from his permission to stay here for as long as it takes to plot the deception. Sakata doesn't seem 100% on-board with faked deaths, but he isn't surprised to hear that Vinnie followed his men, and agrees that someone should go get him and Hamid before the police spot suspicious characters lurking by the highway.
Wen gets the task of fetching Hamid and Vinnie. The Artist's staff let her out the high-security front door, whereupon she sneaks down to the highway on foot. Vinnie sees her coming despite her stealth, and returns to the van to open the hidden floor hatch for her. Wen slips in and explains what's going on inside the house, after which Vinnie starts up the vehicle, turns it around, and slowly approaches the gate with the lights out. The Artist's men open the gate, allowing Vinnie to drive onto the property and park out of sight under some trees.
Once the entire team is reassembled at the house, they explain how they could simulate the deaths of everybody present. The trick would involve what looks like an armed raid carried out in full view of the place's security cameras, an actual explosion, and DNA evidence in the form of lots of cells grown from samples taken from the apparent victims. With suitable F/X and adjustments to the timestamps on the security records, it would appear as though the Agents rolled in with guns and explosives, were spotted by the Artist's staff, and accidentally blew up themselves and everyone else in the ensuing scuffle. In reality, everyone would be evacuated hours before the time on the digital recording, leaving behind doctored surveillance data and a massive time bomb with cultured tissue packed around it. Hamid and Jili outline the electronic fakery involved, Qoqa explains the basics of tissue culturing, and Vinnie and Wen chip in details about explosives.
Sakata listens intently and then asks, "How would this be better than the death I faked years ago?" Anabel requests that Sakata explain exactly how he accomplished that, which he does: He filled a fast car with accelerants and sent it off a cliff at high speed, hoping that any investigators would find a twisted, charred wreck and conclude that any occupants were carbonized. The Agents then outline the advantages of their proposal, pointing out that it's self-evident that the CIA and MSS didn't fall for Sakata's stratagem, because they're still searching for him. They emphasize that the team's hoax would leave a body (in a sense) and other professionally doctored evidence, and wouldn't suffer from having Toru – a known CIA contact – in the shadows.
This seems to convince Sakata, who sends for his companion to find out whether she wants to "die." When the Artist rejoins the meeting, the Agents reiterate their plan to her. Anabel plays up the emotional angle, talking about how the CIA and MSS are closing in on her lover, most likely with the intent to kill him, and how the team has the backing and resources to guarantee the couple a new life together, somewhere far away. The Artist's reactions are mixed: She understands the need for the elaborate deception, and would like to continue her relationship with Sakata, but considers her art just as important. She would only take part in this subterfuge if she had a guarantee that the many large, heavy sculptures on the property would end up in galleries or on tour, not blown to bits.
Further discussion on this last point reveals that the Artist is a recluse whose sculpture is often admired but rarely sold. Profits from the sale of just two pieces paid for her land! While the Agents aren't art connoisseurs, they figure it wouldn't be hard to arrange for good homes for art created by somebody with that kind of drawing power. The Company could doubtless manage, and of course the sculpture would only be in greater demand once word got around that the Artist had been assassinated. After contemplating these points, the Artist gives her tentative agreement.
Anabel then asks the Artist about her staff – the five men who met the group near the Golden Pavilion. The Artist states, "Oh, they're ninja. They'll go along with this for me." When pressed on this, it seems that the men are essentially her adoptive sons, and that their mission in life is helping her maintain her bizarre seclusion. This arrangement strikes Anabel and the others as profoundly odd, but the Artist appears to be telling the truth. Given that these "ninja" did keep Sakata's presence a secret from the Japanese authorities, the CIA, and so forth, the Agents decide not to press the issue.
Finally, the Agents ask Asuka whether she would want to resume her life with a new identity, far away from here. They make the downsides clear: giving up her inheritance and walking away from her Japanese friends. The benefits are leaving behind her Yakuza past and the assassins hunting her – because with Sakata "dead" and her no longer making claims on the fortune of a gangster who sold information to the CIA, it's unlikely that she would remain a target worth looking for. She could move wherever she liked, even be given an identity that supports Sakata and the Artist as her "parents," so that she would not have to bear the burden of secrecy alone. Asuka agrees to the plan almost immediately.
After a long night of talking, it seems as if everyone under the Artist's roof is willing to be "erased" in a huge explosion, with the only caveat being that some sculpture end up in good homes. This last bit would necessitate the Company pulling some strings. However, given the money and patronage behind their organization, the Agents doubt that this will be a deal-breaker. More daunting are the technical difficulties of engineering such a complex deception – and the challenge of convincing the iron-willed Staedert to use Darmatech's substantial biotech knowhow to culture massive amounts of tissue.
Despite the late hour, the Agents feel that the sooner they get things moving, the better. Using a secure phone provided by Sakata – and even Hamid and Jili are willing to concede that the man knows communications security – Anabel calls Chaturvedi. As soon as the handler picks up, Anabel fills him in on the group's grand scheme. Then she requests Darmatech's aid on tissue culturing and the Company's assistance with putting a whole lot of sculpture in galleries or on tour.
While Chaturvedi seems a little overwhelmed by all this, he agrees to pass the squad's requests up the chain. He warns that if this mad subterfuge actually happens, the Agents will have to arrange an immediate clandestine departure from Japan for everyone, and should include that in their preparations. Anabel acknowledges this and then asks whether there has been any further news on Asuka's inheritance hearing. Chaturvedi says that remains frozen while the Japanese authorities investigate the violence surrounding it. Before hanging up, he establishes the code phrase he'll use online to signal for another secure phone call – innocent words on a public site – when he has the Company's decision.
With dawn lighting up the windows, everybody needs some rest. Sakata says that the group is welcome to stay in the "lodge" where the ninja live. This proves to be the Artist's low, sprawling workshop at the rear of the property. While nowhere near as fancy or comfortable as the Artist's glass-and-concrete house, it's well-built and more than large enough to house the entire team as well as the five ninja – indeed, it's downright cavernous, being the birthplace of multi-tonne poured-concrete sculptures. Sakata words his invitation in a way that tells the Agents that they're free to stick around as long as required, but that they're being locked out of the house in a place where the ninja can monitor them. Asuka, however, receives a guest room in the main building.
For the moment being, the Agents have little to do but await their backers' reaction to their plans. As it happens, the ninja are charming fellows; they do their polite best to turn a dusty workshop into a comfortable barracks (although Anabel isn't thrilled with the accommodations). The enforced wait gives the wounded time to recover from their injuries. It's the evening of Thursday, December 29 when Chaturvedi signals the group to get back in touch. Sakata provides a secure line once again, and Anabel puts a call through at once.
Chaturvedi relates that Staedert read his report on Sakata and what he has to offer the Company – namely, an economic strategic weapon plus lower-profile ways to make a great deal of money – and took it to the top. Staedert apparently got a green light on the plan; in her words, "My colleagues feel that the potential payoff is worth the attendant risks." Thus, Staedert is willing to back the plan with Darmatech's substantial biotech resources, which she deems "an excellent stress test for the technology, anyway." The Agents will need to ship some specialized tissue samples to Darmatech via courier, which will necessitate Darmatech sending them some high-tech gear in Japan. Anabel says she'll look into the logistics of this and get right back to Chaturvedi.
When Anabel tells Sakata that her backers will need a shipping address, Sakata asks her to wait and then walks off. After a few minutes, the Artist shows up with one of the ninja. The woman explains that she sees no reason not to use her delivery address in Kyoto and have her aide pick up the package there. She emphasizes that the shipment needs to be clearly labeled and invoiced as "Art Supplies" to avoid arousing suspicion. As long as it is, though, it should look like any of hundreds of other such deliveries to that address over the years. Anabel calls back Chaturvedi and shares this information.
Then it's time to wait again. The Agents decide to use this opportunity to start scheming. A few days of making lists and mulling contingencies resolves several matters:
• Wen and Vinnie work out that the explosive device should be a massive ANFO truck bomb, roughly equivalent in power to a one-tonne general-purpose aircraft bomb. This necessitates appropriating the ingredients and a truck. The charge must be designed to accommodate a "meat sleeve" packed with the cultured tissue in such a way that DNA evidence is scattered around the blast site in a believable way.
• An escape plan emerges. For it to work, the Artist must arrange to have her sculpture trucked off the property in containers – with Company assistance, if necessary – over a period of days or weeks before the staged attack and explosion. The final container, which will leave just 24 hours before the blast, will be adapted as shielded living quarters for everyone present. The bomb will be on a timer and explode a day after everyone is shipped away to safety. However, digital surveillance records will be altered to make it look as though everyone in the container is present to be killed in the blast.
• Everybody is going to have to act convincingly in front of Sakata's surveillance cameras to make it look as if the Agents use their van to crash the gate and then follow it in with a truck bomb, with the aim of abducting Sakata and erasing the evidence using an explosion. The most crucial piece of acting will be the ninja reacting to the attack in a way that sees the bomb accidentally going off early, apparently killing everyone.
• Hamid and Jili conclude that for all this to work, they must doctor the place's surveillance recordings so that when investigators find the "black box" and/or the off-site backups, the data support the Agents invading the day of the explosion and accidentally killing themselves and everyone else. This necessitates not only falsified timestamps (difficult on a system this secure), but also painstaking efforts to erase any evidence of the Agents' presence here before the fake raid, and of people being stashed in a shipping container.
There are so many "moving parts" to this plan that everybody wants to script things as much as possible. To this end, the Agents do whatever they can to improve their odds of success:
• Anabel uses Sakata's secure Internet connection to read about vehicle theft in and around Kyoto, and locates a "hot spot" where Vinnie can steal a large truck for the bomb without it seeming like anything but yet another petty crime.
• Hamid uses the secure connection to dig up a list of several places nearby where the team can steal ingredients for a large ANFO device in dribs and drabs, so that if any one theft is noticed before the plan is put in motion, it won't cause too much alarm. Knowing that every counterterrorism officer in the world is antsy about such things, he carefully covers his digital tracks.
• Jili researches containers and shipping companies, with the twin goals of finding a fast route to Taiwan and a container that's suitable for sculpture but easily converted for smuggling humans. She has a fair amount of luck. Like Hamid, she aggressively covers her trail, human smuggling being the sort of thing that draws attention.
• Hamid and Jili also spend some time poring over the manuals for Sakata's state-of-the-art security system, examining its software and hardware, and becoming familiar with what they'll need to do to alter the records without it being painfully obvious. They conclude that while this won't be easy, it should be doable if Sakata grants them top-level access from now until it's time to flee the area.
• Wen designs the ANFO device in detail, taking into account the kind of truck that will carry it, the need for a timer, and the mission requirement that it level a concrete house and leave meat sprayed all over the rubble.
The shipment from Darmatech arrives on Monday, January 2, 2012, by which time the Agents have done all the planning they can do – it's time for action. But first, Qoqa needs to stab everyone with needles. The box from Darmstadt is full of gleaming equipment for this purpose, along with detailed instructions for shipping the samples back swiftly. When Anabel calls Chaturvedi to confirm receipt, he informs her that Staedert's plan is to culture the tissue as quickly as possible, artificially "age" it with radiation, and then air-freight the resulting meat to Japan in refrigerated containers that identify the contents as gourmet German sausage.