The Loner
He had noticed it — when he addressed Natsume Xiayu as Cointreau's sister, Cointreau hadn't bothered to deny it.
So Cointreau really was Natsume Aether, the man who had vanished without a trace all those years ago. Could it be that the rumor within the Organization wasn't true after all — that Cointreau's circumstances were different from Vermouth's?
But before he could turn the thought over, Cointreau's next words made Bourbon's heart clamp down tight.
He kept his voice as neutral as he could. "Why do you say that? You saved a cop — what's that got to do with making me happy?"
"I'd call it leverage on me, actually. I assumed knowing about it would put you in a better mood. Am I wrong?"
Bourbon loosened the fist he'd been clenching outside the frame of the screen. "That's hardly leverage. There's no evidence — the only person who's ever seen your face in that connection is that one cop from back then. Even if he told the others, it's one man's word against nothing. It barely touches you.
What I'd rather know is this: why did you save that cop in the first place?"
What Amuro Toru actually wanted to know was this: did Cointreau know Matsuda? How much did he know about him? And — did Cointreau have any idea who he, Bourbon, really was?
"Nothing to it." Cointreau turned his gaze back to the computer in front of him. "I happened to be there, I hated the bomber, and saving him was on the way. Done.
Speaking of that bomber — the police really are useless, aren't they? I figured once I saved that cop, they'd have the culprit in cuffs within days. Instead the man walked free for three years.
In the end other people got dragged into it, and I had to handle it myself. From what I hear, that bomber had already killed a few officers seven years ago. The police just keep getting more and more worthless. Then again — maybe that's not such a bad thing."
Cointreau, apparently oblivious to how sour Bourbon's mood was growing on the other side of the screen, kept up his critique of the police with all the relish of a man channeling Gin himself.
Bourbon had to listen to this sneering mockery of the police, delivered with unmistakable gloating, unable to cut it off even as it grated on him. His mood sank lower and lower.
At least he'd learned one thing: the bomber from back then really had died at Cointreau's hand.
The moment Cointreau finally finished, and purely out of a spirit of misery loving company, Bourbon offered what sounded like a well-meaning suggestion. "You seem awfully concerned about your little sister, Cointreau. Why not reunite with her? With your abilities, a little caution would be enough — the Boss would never find out."
Of course Bourbon knew perfectly well that Cointreau would never do such a thing — that was precisely why he'd said it. There was no reason to drag an innocent like Natsume Xiayu into the Organization's field of view unless he had to.
Bourbon understood that if Cointreau had ever wanted to reclaim his sister, he would have done it long ago; he wouldn't have waited until today to use the matter as a threat. Judging by how he carried himself, there was no doubt at all that he would never allow his sister to face even a whisper of danger.
"Heh." At Bourbon's suggestion, Cointreau's hands stopped dead. He turned to look at Bourbon. "Xiayu has been searching for me all this time. At the very least, she's never forgotten me — and she never will stop waiting. But you..."
A mocking smile curled across Cointreau's face. "I hear the two partners you used to work with were both undercover — and one of them killed the other. Ah, but of course, they're both dead now." Dead, at least, as far as the world could see.
"Farewell, lonely man." And without giving Bourbon a single second to respond, Cointreau reached out and cut the connection with brisk, surgical finality.
Bourbon sat there in the aftermath of Cointreau's words, feeling as though several knives had just been driven into his chest all at once. The scene of Hiromitsu's sacrifice three years ago came rushing back, and his eyes nearly went red.
Damn you, Akai Shuichi. You had better be truly dead — because if you're not, I will kill you with my own two hands, as an offering to Hiromitsu.
Bourbon drained his glass in one swallow.
Today's conversation with Cointreau had torn something open in him — and yet, at the same time, it had given Bourbon — no, given Furuya Rei — a rare chance to look back on that brief, golden stretch of days at the police academy.
If only time hadn't flown the way it did. Hagiwara Kenji, then Morofushi Hiromitsu — gone one after another. And Matsuda Jinpei would surely have joined them, if Cointreau hadn't stepped in.
The thought left Furuya Rei's heart a tangle of feelings.
On that count, at least, he owed Cointreau his gratitude — even if he couldn't quite bring himself to believe that the man's stated reason for saving Matsuda was the whole truth.
And there was Captain Date as well. He wondered how Date's years on the force had treated him. The last text he'd gotten from him was a year ago; he'd never found the time to visit. He hoped nothing had happened to him.
As it happened, today's case involved Date, and would require him to come in and give a statement.
Furuya Rei decided that in a day or two, he'd find an excuse to stop by the Metropolitan Police Department — ask Matsuda Jinpei about the details of his rescue back then, and see the captain while he was at it.
Meanwhile, on the other end of that severed call, Cointreau had already tossed the whole conversation with Bourbon out of his head and returned to the work at hand.
The computer had been angled away from the terminal's camera the entire time; Bourbon had never been able to see the screen.
If he had, he would have discovered that what Cointreau had been so busy with was no work of the Organization's at all — or to be precise, none of the Organization's Japan operations, but the affairs of its European branch in Country F.
Task assignments, personnel transfers, financial approvals, the vetting of which reports ought to reach the Boss of the Black Organization — with Neuvillette's help, Cointreau had, in effect, all but replaced the head of the European branch outright.
And the next step was to flush out the moles that every faction had planted inside the European branch, use those moles to reach the powers behind them, display both strength and profit — and, in time, strike up cooperative arrangements with a number of agencies.