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Air Chrysalis
might lead to revelations about what happened to
Eri’s parents. Is that what you mean about throwing a stone in a pond?”
“That’s pretty close,” Professor Ebisuno said. “If
Air Chrysalis
becomes a
bestseller, the media are going to swarm like carp in a pond. In fact, the commotion
has already started. After the press conference, requests for interviews started pouring
in from magazines and TV. I’m turning them all down, of course, but things are likely
to get increasingly overheated as publication of the book draws near. If we don’t do
interviews, they’ll use every tool at their disposal to look into Eri’s background.
Sooner or later it will come out—who her parents are, where and how she was raised,
who’s looking after her now. All of that should make for interesting news.
“I’m not doing this for fun or profit. I enjoy my nice, quiet life in the mountains,
and I don’t want to get mixed up with anything that is going to draw the attention of
the public. What I am hoping is that I can spread bait to guide the attention of the
media toward Eri’s parents.
Where are they now, and what are they doing?
In other
words, I want the media to do for me what the police can’t or won’t do. I’m also
thinking that, if it works well, we might even be able to exploit the flow of events to
rescue the two of them. In any case, Fukada and his wife are both very important to
me—and of course to Eri. I can’t just leave them unaccounted for like this.”
“Yes, but assuming the Fukadas are in there, what possible reason could there have
been for them to have been kept under restraint for seven years? That’s a
very long
time
!”
208
“I don’t know any better than you do. I can only guess,” Professor Ebisuno said.
“As I told you last time, the police did a search of Sakigake in connection with the
Akebono shootout, but all they found was that Sakigake had absolutely nothing to do
with the case. Ever since then, Sakigake has continued steadily to strengthen its
position as a religious organization. No, what am I saying? Not steadily: they did it
quite rapidly. But even so, people on the outside had almost no idea what they were
actually doing in there. I’m sure you don’t know anything about them.”
“Not a thing,” Tengo said. “I don’t watch TV, and I hardly read the newspaper.
You can’t tell by me what people in general know.”
“No, it’s not just you who don’t know anything about them. They purposely keep
as low a profile as possible. Other new religions do showy things to get as many
converts as they can, but not Sakigake. Their goal is not to increase the number of
their believers. They want healthy, young believers who are highly motivated and
skilled in a wide variety of professional fields. So they don’t go out of their way to
attract converts. And they don’t admit just anybody. When people show up asking to
join, they interview them and admit them selectively. Sometimes they go out of their
way to recruit people who have particular skills they are looking for. The end result is
a militant, elite religious organization.”
“Based on what kind of doctrine?”
“They probably don’t have any set scriptures. Or if they do, they’re very eclectic.
Roughly, the group follows a kind of esoteric Buddhism, but their everyday lives are
centered not so much on particular doctrines as on labor and ascetic practice—quite
stern austerities. Young people in search of that kind of spiritual life hear about them
and come from all over the country. The group is highly cohesive and obsessed with
secrecy.”
“Do they have a guru?”
“Ostensibly, no. They reject the idea of a personality cult, and they practice
collective leadership, but what actually goes on in there is unclear. I’m doing my best
to gather what intelligence I can, but very little seeps out. The one thing I can say is
that the organization is developing steadily and seems to be very well funded. The
land owned by Sakigake keeps expanding, and its facilities are constantly improving.
Also, the wall around the property has been greatly reinforced.”
“And at some point, the name of Fukada, the original leader of Sakigake, stopped
appearing.”
“Exactly. It’s all very strange. I’m just not convinced by what I hear,” Professor
Ebisuno said. He glanced at Fuka-Eri and turned back to Tengo. “Some kind of major
secret is hidden inside there. I’m sure that, at some point, a kind of realignment
occurred in Sakigake’s organization. What it consisted of, I don’t know. But because
of it, Sakigake underwent a major change of direction from agricultural commune to
religion. I imagine that something like a coup d’état occurred at that point, and
Fukada was swept up in it. As I said before, Fukada was a man without the slightest
religious inclinations. He must have poured every ounce of his strength into trying to
put a stop to such a development. And probably he lost the battle for supremacy in
Sakigake at that time.”
Tengo considered this for a moment and said, “I understand what you are saying,
but even if you are right, isn’t this something that could have been solved just by
209
expelling Fukada from Sakigake, like the peaceful splitting off of Akebono from
Sakigake? They wouldn’t have had to lock him up, would they?”
“You’re quite right about that. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have
been no need to take the trouble of locking him up. But Fukada would almost
certainly have had his hands on some of Sakigake’s secrets by then, things that
Sakigake would have found very awkward if they were exposed to the public. So just
throwing him out was not the answer.
“As the original founder of the community, Fukada had acted as its virtual leader
for years and must have witnessed everything that had been done on the inside. He
must have known too much. In addition to which, he himself was quite well known to
the public at large. So even if Fukada and his wife wanted to renounce their ties with
the group, Sakigake could not simply let them go.”
“And so you are trying to shake up the stalemate indirectly? You want to stir up
public interest by letting Eri have a sensational debut as a writer, with
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