White Matter

Interrogation

When they finally came, it was without warning. No jackboots, no pounding on the door. Not even cuffs or wire tethers, this time. The door opened and a curt order was given. Time to get up and go. It was the man-in-a-suit, the one with the gun who had apprehended us back at Shigeru's apartment.

We were taken to an elongated version of our prison cell. It lacked the woodwork and leather to be a board room, more likely a meeting room for lower middle management, with a long table down the middle and chairs on either side. The two of us were directed to sit together. Facing us was an elderly man, to his left the young woman who had served our meal. The only things missing were miniature symbol-emblazoned flags to represent the opposing factions.

The suit-wearing, and presumably gun-toting, gangster took up station by the one and only door.

I wouldn't have picked him out as the godfather of a criminal cartel. He was old, thickset, and even siting down you could tell he wasn't particularly tall. True, there was a coldness in his eyes, but even so there was little to pick between him and the henchman who had handed us Miranda's ransom note, back at Ueno Station. He spoke and the woman at his side translated.

"Are you trying to make a fool of us, Mr Williams? Or are you just a fool?"

I shifted my seat sideways to get a better view of Graeme's reaction. I needn't have bothered. His expression was no different from what it always was.

"We never asked you to invest in Spurious Developments," he said.

She passed across a sheet of paper. Graeme glanced at it then handed it to me. It was the printout of a news report, a follow up to our press conference. I didn't have time for the fine print, but the word 'fraud' stood out in a bold typeface.

"You got yourself kidnapped? For nothing more than a hoax? That does not seem very smart."

"We never asked to be kidnapped," said Graeme.

The Godfather barked out something that was too fast or too idiomatic for me to make out.

"Now you are making a fool of yourself," she translated, presumably paraphrasing. The old man then continued without waiting for Graeme to reply.

"We are having difficulty deciding what to make of you Mr. Williams," went her translation. "We started out believing you were a serious scientist. Now we are wondering if you are no more than a crackpot. The sort of person who spouts esoteric nonsense and believes he knows great secrets. Or was that another of your hoaxes?"

She allowed time for Graeme to reply, but got only silence.

"Our people have been looking through what we recovered from the laboratory in your apartment. So far they have reported nothing of interest. It would save us a lot of time, and perhaps save you some discomfort, if you were to tell us what you were doing there."

This time Graeme replied. "At the apartment? All you would have found there were bits and pieces. Fragments of work in progress. I'm not surprised your people didn't get very far looking at that. Our real work is kept somewhere else."

She translated Graeme's reply, then switched back to English without waiting for the old man to respond.

"That's better Mr. Williams. Now if you want to avoid that discomfort, perhaps you had better tell us where this work is kept and how we can acquire it."

"Oh it's in the most unlikely of places, and nowhere you would think to look. Nor for that matter is it anything you could acquire. You ask where it is? It's all around you."