The Getaway
. The Steve
McQueen movie. A wad of bills and a shotgun. I love that kind of stuff.”
“More than being on the side that enforces the law?”
“Personally, yes,” Ayumi said with a smile. “I’m more drawn to outlaws. They’re
a whole lot more exciting than riding around in a mini patrol car and handing out
parking tickets. That’s what I like about you.”
“Do I look like an outlaw?”
Ayumi nodded. “How should I put it? I don’t know, you just have that atmosphere
about you, though maybe not like a Faye Dunaway holding a machine gun.”
“I don’t need a machine gun,” Aomame said.
“About that religious commune we were talking about last time, Sakigake …,” Ayumi
said.
The two were sharing a light meal and a bottle of Chianti at a small, late-night
Italian restaurant in Iikura, a quiet neighborhood. Aomame was having a salad with
strips of raw tuna, while Ayumi had ordered a plate of gnocchi with basil sauce.
“Uh-huh,” Aomame said.
“You got me interested, so I did a little searching on my own. And the more I
looked, the fishier it began to smell. Sakigake calls itself a religion, and it even has
official certification, but it’s totally lacking any religious
substance
. Doctrine-wise,
it’s kind of deconstructionist or something, just a jumble of
images
of religion thrown
together. They’ve added some new-age spiritualism, fashionable academicism, a
return to nature, anticapitalism, occultism, and stuff, but that’s all: it has a bunch of
flavors, but no substantial core. Or maybe that’s what it’s all about: this religion’s
substance is its lack of substance. In McLuhanesque terms, the medium is the
message. Some people might find that cool.”
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“McLuhanesque?”
“Hey, look, even I read a book now and then,” Ayumi protested. “McLuhan was
ahead of his time. He was so popular for a while that people tend not to take him
seriously, but what he had to say was right.”
“In other words, the package itself is the contents. Is that it?”
“Exactly. The characteristics of the package determine the nature of the contents,
not the other way around.”
Aomame considered this for a moment and said, “The core of Sakigake as a
religion is unclear, but that has nothing to do with why people are drawn to it, you
mean?”
Ayumi nodded. “I wouldn’t say it’s amazing how many people join Sakigake, but
the numbers are by no means small. And the more people who join, the more money
they put together. Obviously. So, then, what is it about this religion that attracts so
many people? If you ask me, it’s primarily that it doesn’t
smell
like a religion. It’s
very clean and intellectual, and it looks systematic. That’s what attracts young
professionals. It stimulates their intellectual curiosity. It provides a sense of
achievement they can’t get in the real world—something tangible and personal. And
these intellectual believers, like an elite officers’ corps, form the powerful brains of
the organization.
“Plus,” Ayumi continued, “their ‘Leader’ seems to have a good deal of charisma.
People idolize him. His very presence, you might say, functions like a doctrinal core.
It’s close in origin to primitive religion. Even early Christianity was more or less like
that at first. But
this
guy never comes out in the open. Nobody knows what he looks
like, or his name, or how old he is. The religion has a governing council that
supposedly runs everything, but another person heads the council and acts as the
public face of the religion in official events, though I don’t think he’s any more than a
figurehead. The one who is at the center of the system seems to be this mysterious
‘Leader’ person.”
“Sounds like he wants to keep his identity hidden.”
“Well, either he has something to hide or he keeps his existence obscure on
purpose to heighten the mysterious atmosphere around him.”
“Or else he’s tremendously ugly,” Aomame said.
“That’s possible, I suppose. A grotesque creature from another world,” Ayumi
said, with a monster’s growl. “But anyway, aside from the founder, this religion has
too many things that stay hidden. Like the aggressive real estate dealings I mentioned
on the phone the other day. Everything on the surface is there for show: the nice
buildings, the handsome publicity, the intelligent-sounding theories, the former social
elites who have converted, the stoic practices, the yoga and spiritual serenity, the
rejection of materialism, the organic farming, the fresh air and lovely vegetarian
diet—they’re all like calculated photos, like ads for high-class resort condos that
come as inserts in the Sunday paper. The packaging is beautiful, but I get the feeling
that suspicious plans are hatching behind the scenes. Some of it might even be illegal.
Now that I’ve been through a bunch of materials, that’s the impression I get.”
“But the police aren’t making any moves now.”
“Something may be happening undercover, but I wouldn’t know about that. The
Yamanashi Prefectural Police do seem to be keeping an eye on them to some extent. I
257
kind of sensed that when I spoke to the guy in charge of the investigation. I mean,
Sakigake gave birth to Akebono, the group that staged the shootout, and it’s just
guesswork that Akebono’s Chinese-made Kalashnikovs came in through North
Korea: nobody’s really gotten to the bottom of that. Sakigake is still under some
suspicion, but they’ve got that ‘Religious Juridical Person’ label, so they have to be
handled with kid gloves. The police have already investigated the premises once, and
that made it more or less clear that there was no direct connection between Sakigake
and the shootout. As for any moves the Public Security Intelligence Agency might be
making, we just don’t know. Those guys work in absolute secrecy and have never
gotten along with us.”
“How about the children who stopped coming to public school? Do you know any
more about them?”
“No, nothing. Once they stop going to school, I guess, they never come outside the
walls of the compound again. We don’t have any way of investigating their cases. It
would be different if we had concrete evidence of child abuse, but for now we don’t
have anything.”
“Don’t you get any information about that from people who have quit Sakigake?
There must be a few people at least who become disillusioned with the religion or
can’t take the harsh discipline and break away.”
“There’s constant coming and going, of course—people joining, people quitting.
Basically, people are free to quit anytime. When they join, they make a huge donation
as a ‘Permanent Facility Use Fee’ and sign a contract stipulating that it is entirely
nonrefundable, so as long as they’re willing to accept that loss, they can come out
with nothing but the clothes on their backs. There’s an organization of people who
have quit the religion, and they accuse Sakigake of being a dangerous, antisocial cult
engaged in fraudulent activity. They’ve filed a suit and put out a little newsletter, but
they’re such a small voice they have virtually zero impact on public opinion. The
religion has a phalanx of top lawyers, and they’ve put together a watertight defense.
One lawsuit can’t budge them.”
“Haven’t the ex-members made any statements about Leader or the children
inside?”
“I don’t know,” Ayumi said. “I’ve never read their newsletter. As far as I’ve been
able to check, though, all the dissidents are from the lowest ranks of the group, just
small fry. Sakigake makes a big deal about how they reject all worldly values, but part
of the organization is completely hierarchical, sharply divided between the leadership
and the rest of them. You can’t become a member of the leadership without an
advanced degree or specialized professional qualifications. Only elite believers in the
leadership group ever get to see or receive direct instruction from Leader or make
contact with key figures of the organization. All the others just make their required
donations and spend one sterile day after another performing their religious austerities
in the fresh air, devoting themselves to farming, or spending hours in the meditation
rooms. They’re like a flock of sheep, led out to pasture under the watchful eye of the
shepherd and his dog, and brought back to their shed at night, one peaceful day after
the next. They look forward to the day when their position rises high enough in the
organization for them to come into the presence of Big Brother, but that day never
comes. That’s why ordinary believers know almost nothing about the inner workings
258
of the organization. Even if they quit Sakigake, they don’t have any important
information they can offer the outside world. They’ve never even seen Leader’s face.”
“Aren’t there any members of the elite who have quit?”
“Not one, as far as I can tell.”
“Does that mean you’re not allowed to leave once you’ve learned the secrets?”
“There might be some pretty dramatic developments if it came to that,” Ayumi
said with a short sigh. Then she said to Aomame, “So tell me, about that raping of
little girls you mentioned: how definite is that?”
“Pretty definite, but there’s still no proof.”
“It’s being done systematically inside the commune?”
“That’s not entirely clear, either. We do have one actual victim, though. I’ve met
the girl. They did terrible things to her.”
“By ‘rape,’ do you mean actual penetration?”
“Yes, there’s no question about that.”
Ayumi twisted her lips at an angle, thinking. “I’ve got it! Let me dig into this a
little more in my own way.”
“Don’t get in over your head, now.”
“Don’t worry,” Ayumi said. “I may not look it, but I’m very cautious.”
They finished their meal, and the waiter cleared the table. They declined to order
dessert and, instead, continued drinking wine.
Ayumi said, “Remember how you told me that no men had fooled around with you
when you were a little girl?”
Aomame glanced at Ayumi, registering the look on her face, and nodded. “My
family was very religious. There was never any talk of sex, and it was the same with
all the other families we knew. Sex was a forbidden topic.”
“Well, okay, but being religious has nothing to do with the strength or weakness of
a person’s sex drive. Everybody knows the clergy is full of sex freaks. In fact, we
arrest a
lot
of people connected with religion—and with education—for stuff like
prostitution and groping women on commuter trains.”
“Maybe so, but at least in our circles, there was no hint of that kind of thing,
nobody who did anything they shouldn’t.”
“Well, good for you,” Ayumi said. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“It was different for you?”
Instead of responding immediately, Ayumi gave a little shrug. Then she said, “To
tell you the truth, they messed around with me a lot when I was a girl.”
“Who were ‘they’?”
“My brother. And my uncle.”
Aomame grimaced slightly. “Your brother and uncle?”
“That’s right. They’re both policemen now. Not too long ago, my uncle even
received official commendation as an outstanding officer—thirty years of continuous
service, major contributions to public safety in the district and to improvement of the
environment. He was featured in the paper once for saving a stupid dog and her pup
that wandered into a rail crossing.”
“What did they do to you?”
259
“Touched me down there, made me give them blow jobs.”
The wrinkles of Aomame’s grimace deepened. “Your brother and uncle?”
“Separately, of course. I think I was ten and my brother maybe fifteen. My uncle
did it before that—two or three times, when he stayed over with us.”
“Did you tell anybody?”
Ayumi responded with a few slow shakes of the head. “I didn’t say a word. They
warned me not to, threatened that they’d get me if I said anything. And even if they
hadn’t, I was afraid if I told, they’d blame
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