Last in a two-part series

In mid-April, 12-year-old Michiko Watanabe, as she was now being called, found herself in a precarious situation. Earlier, her mother had clearly let her child know that she would no longer consider herself Michiko's mother if Michiko ever attempted to return to her father. In fact, her mother said that she would never even speak to her again in such a case.

On Day 20 of Michiko's abduction, her mother announced that she needed to step out of the apartment for a few minutes. Shortly after her mother walked out the door, Michiko took a ¥100 coin she had hidden, dashed out of the apartment to a public phone she had noticed a few days earlier down the street, frantically searched through the Yellow Pages looking for her father's business number (he carries no cell phone), phoned her home instead, and left a message containing two very important statements: "I want to come home" and "Come and pick us up."

The very next day, after receiving no-nonsense warnings from my lawyer and a U.S. Embassy representative about the great danger involved in this rescue attempt, and hearing that the judge and one of the family court investigators had expressed their concerns about an attempt turning violent, I planted myself on a relatively empty street corner near the school for two hours and pretended to be waiting for a ride — looking deep up and down the street whenever passing residents seemed too suspicious about this unknown foreigner standing on the corner in a business suit at midafternoon in an aging suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo.