Hong Kong International Airport appears in the epilogue as the carefully chosen site of Jake Adelstein’s meeting with Cyclops. Adelstein wanted safe territory, but the airport’s waiting lounge could offer only a bounded kind of security: he still distrusted the man he had come to confront. There, he sought an answer about whether the information behind the Goto story had been given to him as part of a setup.

Setting and Circumstances

Cyclops had fallen out of favor with the organization and was difficult to track down. His father put him back in touch with Adelstein, and Cyclops agreed to meet, perhaps from a lingering sense of duty and obligation. The airport provided a place outside the immediate setting of their earlier dealings, but it did not dissolve their grievances or restore trust.

The Meeting in the Waiting Lounge

The encounter was brief. Seated together in the waiting lounge, Adelstein asked whether Cyclops had deliberately supplied the information that set the Goto story in motion. The question had stayed with him; he wanted to know if he had been used. Cyclops answered at once that the two of them had indeed been set up.

Revelation and Narrative Significance

Cyclops connected the setup to the consequences for both men. He said he had expected Adelstein to write the story and believed that, had Adelstein followed through as expected, Goto would have been finished in 2005. Instead, Adelstein had walked away. Cyclops also accused him of benefiting from help on the Kajiyama story while leaving Cyclops to suffer the fallout, including being kicked out. The airport meeting thus turns a transit space into the endpoint of an unresolved exchange: Adelstein gets confirmation of the setup, but not reconciliation with the person who says he paid for it.