Hong Kong is the setting for Jake Adelstein’s final meeting with Cyclops, the source who first drew him into the Tadamasa Goto story. At Hong Kong International Airport, chosen by Jake as safer territory because he did not trust Cyclops, the meeting yields both an admission that Jake had been set up and Cyclops’s account of what happened to Helena.

Setting and Purpose

Cyclops had fallen out of favor with his organization and was difficult to locate; his father helped put him back in contact with Jake. Cyclops partly blamed Jake for his troubles, though Jake did not understand why, and agreed to meet, perhaps from a lingering sense of obligation. Jake chose Hong Kong International Airport because he wanted the meeting to take place on safer ground. They sat in the waiting lounge and spoke briefly.

The Airport Conversation

Jake came seeking an answer to one question: whether Cyclops had deliberately supplied the information that launched the Goto story and thereby set him up. Cyclops said that he had. He claimed that if Jake had done what was expected and written the story, Tadamasa Goto would have been finished in 2005. Cyclops also accused Jake of walking away after promising to write it, and connected that decision to his own expulsion from the organization. He said he had helped Jake with the Kajiyama story and felt Jake had ruined his life. Jake had no adequate reply.

Helena and the Site’s Narrative Significance

During the same encounter, Cyclops brought up Helena. Jake said he had been trying to reach her for a long time; Cyclops answered that Jake would never hear from her again and blamed him for her death. He claimed Helena had gone to the International Entertainment Association while carrying Jake’s business card, been caught investigating, and been taken to an office in Ebisu. According to Cyclops, she refused to talk in order to protect Jake, and was tortured and sexually assaulted; he described her likely death in graphic terms. The account is Cyclops’s allegation, not independent confirmation of Helena’s fate. In the epilogue, Hong Kong thus becomes more than a meeting point: the airport lounge is where Jake confronts both the possibility that his earlier reporting exposed others to danger and the limits of what he can know about Helena.