The security team is racing along, pacing Bono. Jerry—his adrenaline

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surging, his arm flung forward like Johnny Unitas, his eyes darting around looking for danger—starts to have a Vietnam flashback. He and his commander and his junior officer are running, running, and people are screaming and shouting and Asians are charging, running toward them and away from them and some of them, the audience, are his friends he has to protect, and others, the angry security guards, he has to avoid or stop from hurting the nice ones and Jerry's sweating hard and trying to keep his eye on Bono, keep the situation under control and keep telling himself this is not Vietnam!

As they come down the homestretch toward the stage, Bono is drenched with sweat, his heart flipping, pushing with all his might to keep running. The kids are going wild now behind and in front of him, charging out into the aisles to touch him or run beside him, the whole hall cheering. Eric cannot believe Bono's ability to find an opening and dash through it a second before it closes; Eric feels like they're running over hills with no idea what's coming up but the ground under their feet collapsing the second they step off it. Bono makes it to the edge of the stage, where the band is still cranking out "Streets" and thinks, "I'll never be able to climb back up there," when he feels Jerry, Eric, and David lifting him, other arms helping and then he's back on the stage, the mike in his hand, climbing up to his feet and into the spotlight and singing. And the whole place knows who he really is now. And the whole place knows they are like him. They are shouting "You too!" "You too.'" "You too!"

After the concert there is plenty of well-wishing and wine-toasting. Madonna has split without saying good night, but her band and D'Arby and LeBon all come back to congratulate U2. Jerry is regaling Bono with a description of his 'Nam flashback during the big run. "I'll tell ya, boss"—Jerry smiles, shaking his head—"if there'd been trees I'd have taken somebody out!" Nobody's seen Adam or Fintan for a while. A door opens and the bassist emerges with a fully shaved head. Fintan follows with a gleam in his eye and proceeds to sit down next to one of the One-Eyed Jacks hostesses. "You've got to drink a lot of sake to get drunk," she observes when she sees what he's having. "I fully intend to, Fintan replies.

After an hour or two of back-scratching it's time to go to the hotel. As Bono walks up the ramp from the back door of the Tokyo Dome to the waiting tour bus, a scream goes up from fans being held behind a

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Rope and one young man clutching a U2 tour book zips under the rope and comes tearing toward Bono. It is startling, and I don't blame Oddjob, the Japanese guide, for karate-chopping the guy in the throat, so that his legs shoot forward and he sits down sharply on his ass. But Bono is furious. He screams at Oddjob and then picks the intruder up, makes sure he's okay, and spends five minutes talking to him and signing his tour book while the kids behind the rope get more and more frantic and the security guards more nervous.

Back at the hotel, the End of Tour party is weary and restrained. A suite at the hotel has been hired and people drift in and out all night, sipping drinks and munching snacks and chatting. Adam sits in the corner in a bathrobe looking as comfortable as if this were his front parlor. The first batch of flights back to Europe and America are at dawn, so a lot of people plan to stay up till then and sleep on the plane. Bono is one of them. But at about 3 he says he's going down to his room for a minute to make a call, and falls asleep on his bed.

One by one the other U2s drift away from the shindig. Fintan puts on one of his endless supply of dance tapes. (Fintan's influence on U2's taste cannot be overestimated. There must be twenty or thirty people anxious to tell the world how this or that Zoo TV/Achtung Baby/Zooropa idea came from them. Fintan's a bigger influence than all of them put together, but you'll never hear that from Fintan.)

Some of the hostesses from One-Eyed Jacks are here, too, ordering endless sake from room service and exchanging sensitive glances with the security squad. Paul McGuinness departs with an invitation to call him anytime and "ask me the really tough questions."

The last star standing is Larry Mullen. At about 4 a.m. the most private member of U2 turns and tells me the Secret of the Universe:

Nobody in U2 understands it. None of us understands where this music comes from. If one of us wrote a book about the band he wouldn't be able to explain it. We don't know. You asked me earlier about our faith." He raises his eyes to indicate heaven without saying it out loud and says, "I have to believe that is where it comes from. And we do dance right along the edge of how far we can go away from that. And sometimes we go too far."

The question that started this journey was, "How far are you gonna go before you lose your way back home?" These jokers have gone all the

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Way to the ends of the world, danced with their doubts and tested their temptations, and never did get completely lost. From here on I know they will have the confidence to go anywhere their imaginations take them.

Aftershocks

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