X is the protagonist/narrator of New Rose Hotel. As all the story is his memories, he passes unnamed. In the film adaptation he is credited as X and is portrayed by Willem Dafoe.
Background[]
All that he mentions about his past is that it has gone down, it is lost and there is no trace of it. He had ventures into intercorporate espionage.
Fox[]
He and Fox were discussing plans in the dark hotel lounge on Bencoolen Street, Singapore. Possibly they first met there. Fox explained his philosophy about the ecosystem of the zaibatsus and dismissed X's ventures. Fox was after the "Edge", the human capital of talent, and said that money was in defectors. He said that Mass Biolabs was full of "Edge" and was obsessed with Hiroshi Yomiuri of Maas.
For two years the partners did business in Shinjuku.
After Hiroshi[]
X was sent to Frankfurt by Fox 3 times, just to stalk on Hiroshi. He saw Maas security teams everywhere, and each time he returned saying that we will never touch him.
While in a bar in Yokohama, X first met Sandii, a sex worker. That night they ended up in a hotel room. X fell in love with her. They spent time in Harajuku, and Kamakura. He lay all night with her on the beach at Kamakura, listening ot her nightmares and one of the stories of her supposed past. One time she left the hotel saying she forgotten their key and ran back to that beach. X found it in the door and went after her; he found her in the sea, trembling, mute, looking far away.
Fox found in Sandii an opportunity to touch Hiroshi. X took her to Barcelona and stayed at the Ritz. They strolled down the Ramblas to the Phoenician harbor, past the glass-roofed Mercado.
The next week he took her to Vienna, where Hiroshi was for a conference. With Fox they bargained Hiroshi to Hosaka officials, dead calm in an L.A. hotel room. They said they had to think about it.
Finally they accepted the offer, but they wanted Hiroshi to work in isolation. X went to Marrakech. He found a heroin lab in the medina old city, that had been converted to the extraction of pheromones, and bought it, with Hosaka's money. He browsed the market of Demaa-el-Fna With a Portuguese businessman they discussed fluorescent lighting and the installation of ventilated specimen cages. He only hinted that his employers planned to manufacture synthetic beta-endorphin.
Back at the Hilton, he received Sandii's message she relayed through Fox. She successfully seduced Hiroshi and he agreed to leave his wife and defect from Hosaka.
Germany[]
X went directly to Berlin where "they know how to do busines promptly". He met with a Welshman in a bar to arrange for Hiroshi's disappearance from Vienna, buy a new identity for Sandii and her flight to Marrakech, out of Orly. He arranged a last night with Sandii, secretly from Fox who might not have approved. They took the autobahn and 1 hour later they reached a Rhenish town. From the room's window he watched the empty streets and the rain over the river.
As she slept, he went through her purse to ensure her new identity. He took a Chinese .22 gun, a Cray microcomputer and her bank chip. He replaced them with her Dutch passport and a Swiss bank chip in the same name. Then henoticed an unlabeled diskette, which, unknown to him, had the code of a meningial virus by Maas. He ignored it and lay down with her.
In Geneva, he was in a hotel room when the Welshman called him, notifying him that Hiroshi was on his way for Marrakech. He poured a drink and thought of Sandii's legs. Sandii promised to meet him in Shinjuku in a month
Japan[]
He met Fox in Narita a day later, in a sushi bar in the JAL terminal. He told X that Hiroshi was happy there and happy with Sandii.
They spent the following week in adjoining suites on the 53rd floor of the Hyatt in Tokyo, overlooking the Imperial gardens. Fox maintained his interest in Hiroshi and had X keep in touch with the Portuguese businessman who kept an eye on the Hosaka lab in Djemaa-el-Fna. Fox was worried that Hosaka was moving security into Marrakech. He changed, looked tense and withdrawn, lost in his worries and often staring outside the window.
After a description of a man entering Hiroshi's lab, he was worried that he was talking about Moenner, Hosaka's leading gene man and asked X for more details. Later the Portuguese identified Chedanne, head of Hosaka's protein team which worried Fox. X reminded him of the saturation techniques of Hosaka security; this massive infiltration of agents into Marrakech could only happen with cooperation of the Moroccan government. Fox speculated that there's some kind of power struggle in Hosaka research; some official is sending his favorite researchers to learn from Hiroshi.
That night, the Portuguese associate called X annd told them that Hosaka evaporated their account. A plague hit the Medina, hitting Hosaka's best brains. Fox realized that Sandii sold them and now Hosaka was after them. X made a call and confirmed that their account was gone. Fox took 3 gold bars and X some 100 New Yen and Sandii's stuff. They ran out of a service door and down into Shinjuku. Their former associates closed the doors to them, showing Hosaka's reach. Nobody helped or allowed them to disappear. They ran before anyone had a chance to reach for the phone.
Hosaka let them run for most of that first day. Then, in a Ginza department store, they sent someone to kill them. X saw Fox falling with his gold and be killed. X evaded them and went to hide in New Rose Hotel.
He spent 7 nights in the pod, watching Japanese game shows and old movies, listening and watching the jets and Hosaka helicopters hunting for him on infrared, going through Sandii' stuff and caressing her gun, obviously having forgiven her. In the end of the story, he hears a corporate helicopter approaching.