“Domo arrigato gozaimas, Toshikazu Kasigi,” she said formally, bowing slightly from the hips in the Japanese manner. “I am in your debt.” Before he could respond, she took a deep breath and continued quietly, “You said earlier that somebody created that file and put it in my directory — and they locked it, so I couldn’t delete it. So that it would be found?”
Toshikazu’s smile faded and he nodded. “So I speculate.”
“So that would mean…” Her mind shied back from the obvious conclusion, but she forced herself to face the fear. “So that would mean somebody’s trying to link me with last night.”
Toshikazu nodded again, slowly. He glanced around him, as if afraid of eavesdroppers, and lowered his voice even further. Nikki had to lean close to him to pick out his words. “I have heard through sources,” Toshikazu said in English, “that Eichiro-san has suffered great loss of face from the events of last night. To use one of your more pungent American phrases, ‘his balls are in a vice.’” Nikki grinned at the way the idiom sounded coming from Toshikazu’s lips. But her smile quickly faded in the face of her friend’s seriousness.
“The Special Projects lab was very important to Nagara’s future,” Toshikazu continued. “Exceptionally i mportant. Pivotal, in fact. It was Eichiro-san’s project, his instigation, his responsibility. And now it is gone. It looks exceptionally bad on Eichiro-san’s record that I he ‘wreckers’ managed to penetrate the security that lie had established around the lab. The success of the raid is, to the Board’s way of thinking, his responsibility and his shame.” He hesitated, fixed Nikki with his dark eyes. “How much less shameful would his failure seem if it were to be proven that Eichiro-san had been betrayed from within ..?.” He let his voice trail off.
Nfikki nodded slowly. It made a horrible kind of sense, taking into account what she knew about the paranoia that flowed like a subterranean river through Japanese corporate culture. “A frame, then?” she asked.
Toshikazu inclined his head. “Perhaps.”
She waited for her friend to say more, but he held his peace. That’s right, she thought, he doesn’t like speculating without enough data to go on. “So what do you think I should do?” sire asked.
He was silent for a few more seconds, then shrugged. “I would suggest nothing,” he said at last. “The manufactured evidence is gone, the only person who has any
record of it being there is the one who planted it. If you react in any way, you risk stirring up the suspicions of l hose the evidence was supposed to convince. I think the best course — the only course — is to carry on as though nothing had happened.”
She snorted. “Just play dumb?” she demanded.
He shrugged again. “What else would you do?” he asked. “Accuse Eichiro-san of trying to frame you? Take your case to Kubota-san in the executive penthouse? The evidence is gone, it would be your word against that of Eichiro-san, and you are …”
“A gaijin,” Nikki cut in, “I know.”
“I was going to say ‘a relatively junior technician,’” Toshikazu continued mildly. “What else would you do? Resign, and storm off in high dudgeon? That would just convince everyone that you were guilty, and you would find it difficult gaining further employment anywhere in Japan.”
Nikki sighed. She recognized the truth in what Toshikazu was saying. But…
“It is difficult, I know,” Toshikazu said quietly, seeming to read her mind. “But you have little choice but to keep your guard up, and stay aware of what happens around you.”
He’s right, she admitted with another resigned sigh. Impulsively, she reached out and squeezed his arm. “Keep my guard up,” she echoed. “That goes for you too.”
He nodded, for the first time his face showing an expression of worry.
*
The tenth floor cafeteria was crowded, now, filled with the dull hubbub of multiple muted conversation. Quite different from the last time I saw it, Nikki thought as she walked into the large room. The large windows looked out onto noontime Tokyo. A pale, watery sun shone through the familiar light mist, glinting palely off the great steel K atop the Kanawa Building, further down Etai-dori. Nikki looked around. The other members of her workgroup were sitting at a table near the automated cash-desks, heads bowed together as if in deep conversation. For a moment she perversely considered joining them, just to see them stop their conversation, to feel their discomfort. But then she put the idea aside as petty, unworthy. And it would be just as uncomfortable for me, anyway, she admitted to herself. She glanced around again. There was Toshikazu, sitting alone at a table near one of the great windows. Their eyes met, and the young man smiled warmly at her. She saw the bowl of soba noodles on the table in front of her, and her stomach growled. Flashing Toshikazu a quick smile and a wink, she joined the lineup in front of the serving counters.
She was feeling much better today. A good night’s sleep — interrupted only occasionally by nightmares —had made a huge difference in the way her body felt, and in her entire outlook on the world. Memories of the mysterious locked file, and Toshikazu’s struggles to erase it, still rankled, still filled her with profound unease. But today her determination, her resolution, were back. So somebody was trying to manipulate her, was that it? She might follow Toshikazu’s advice, to act normally, but — by God — if she found any more evidence of some kind of Machiavellian machinations trying to ensnare her, she wasn’t going to just sit back fatalistically and accept her fate. She was going to fight.
From the large serving counters she selected a large bowl of soba noodles in a light miso-style broth. For desert she picked out a perfect, unblemished pear-apple, swathed in a mesh of elastic white plastic foam. She inserted her corporate credit card into the automated cash-desk’s slot, and waited while the system deducted the 475¥ cost of her meal. Then she took her tray and crossed the large room to join Toshikazu at his table.
He greeted her with a companionable smile, but was too busy with his noodles to say anything. She settled herself down in the plastic-backed chair. Carefully she took the thin wooden chopsticks from their paper sheath, separated them with a dry snick, and rubbed them gently together to remove the rough edges. The noodles were cooked perfectly, she found, soft but not boiled to sogginess.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a familiar face at a nearby table. She turned.
It was a large-framed man with a face the texture of weathered leather and a full shock of white hair: Hiroyo Suganama, the MIS director. I should thank him for yesterday, Nikki thought. But it wouldn’t be polite to interrupt the man’s meal, she knew. Oh, well, she’d catch him on the way out.
She and Toshikazu ate without speaking, both enjoying the companionable silence. Throughout the meal, Nikki turned occasionally, trying to catch Suganama’s eye, ready to give him a warm smile. But the old man kept his eyes down, concentrating on the two sticks of yakitori on his plate. At one time, for just an instant, she thought she felt the man’s eyes on her, but when she turned to look, he was again busy with his food. The moment bothered her a little. Was Suganama ignoring her, for some reason? Then she shook the thought off. Paranoid thinking again, she told herself.
When Nikki and Toshikazu had finished their meal, they stacked their empty trays in the middle of the table for the staff to take away. “I’ll see you in a moment,” she told Toshikazu, “I want to talk to a friend.” Toshikazu nodded good-naturedly. A smile on her face, Nikki started toward Suganama.
The white-haired man looked up. For an instant their eyes met. Suganama’s face flushed suddenly, and he looked quickly away. Hurriedly, he put his chopsticks down on his plate next to the unfinished yakitori. Then, looking for all the world like someone who’d just remembered an important appointment, he bolted to his feet. As Nikki watched, stunned, he turned his back on her, and strode across the room and out the door, disappearing around the corner into the hallway.
Nikki stood, dumbfounded. Then she felt a presence at her elbow. She turned, unsurprised to fin
d Toshikazu standing beside her. Expressionlessly, he was watching the door through which Suganama had vanished. “What was that all about?” she asked quietly.
Toshikazu shook his head. “I don’t know,” he replied in Japanese. “But I’ll find out for you, if you like. Suganama-san is … an old friend of the family, you might say. I’ll see you down in the lab.”
Nikki watched him stride out the same door the MIS director had used. She shook her head in befuddlement. Toshikazu had never mentioned that he knew such an august personage as Suganama. But then, he never talks about his family, she remembered. It didn’t really matter anyway. Suganama’s behavior was much more puzzling than Toshikazu’s family connections. Why had the old man — her mentor, as she liked to think — avoided her so pointedly? Something was definitely happening, and the fact that she didn’t understand it made it feel infinitely worse.
Chapter Three
The rest of Nikki’s workgroup were back at work when she returned to the lab. They glanced up when she entered, but the speed with which they looked back to their work just reinforced the fact that they were ignoring her. Anger warred with confusion in her chest, a churning knot of emotion, as she crossed the lab to her cubicle. Maybe I should just resign, she thought grimly. So what if I don’t work anywhere else in Japan ? I coidd get a job in any research lab in America. She slumped down in her desk chair.
But quitting isn’t really an option, is it? she asked herself. She’d always prided herself on her tenacity, her ability to stick with any course she’d chosen and see it through to its conclusion. It was her “way.”
It seemed like only a couple of minutes later that she took a momentary break, but according to the digital clock on the wall she’d been working for almost half an hour. She stood up, stretched, and looked out into the lab from the door of her cubicle. Toshikazu still wasn’t back, she noticed with some surprise. What was he talking to Suganama about that would take half an hour? Oh, well, she thought, maybe Suganama-san knows what’s behind all this intrigue crap. She turned to go back into her cubicle, but movement at the lab door caught her eye.
The door had swung back, and two white-armored Security “stormtroopers” strode in. Behind them she saw two others with their backs to her, flanking the doorway. What the hell is this? she asked herself.
The two guards strode directly toward her, the members of Group Five looking up in their wake and staring at their armored backs. Stopping in front of her, they both bowed millimetrically. The one on the right flipped up his mirrored faceplate. His eyes were the grey of cold steel.
“Carrson-san,” the guard said, “Eichiro-san invites you to speak with him. Would you care to accompany us?”
It wasn’t an order, not quite. She could, by all rights, refuse — effectively upping the ante, and seeing how the guards would respond. For a moment she considered doing just that, but then decided against it. What good will it do to make a scene? If Eichiro wants to see me, he’ll order me up to his office -— if not nozv, then later. Why not go with dignity?
Those thoughts had flashed through Nikki’s mind in a split second, hardly long enough for the guards to note the hesitation. She forced her face into an expressionless mask, and returned the guards’ bows with a slight nod. “I accept Eichiro-san’s kind offer of hospitality,” she said coolly, using the mode of speech that one would use to a trusted servant, and pitching her voice so the others in her workgroup could hear her. “You will escort me to him at once.”
The guard’s brow furrowed slightly in ill-concealed anger. Without overstepping the bounds of Japanese propriety, Nikki had, by her phrasing, verbally “demoted” them to the status of underlings providing a service. She kept her face totally expressionless, but inside she was smiling. Even a small victory’s a victory, she told herself. Without glancing back — simply assuming that the guards would follow her — she strode to the door. As she passed, the other lab workers looked at her, and shot veiled “I told you so” glances back and forth among themselves, but she kept her gaze straight ahead, ignoring them.
She stepped out into the hallway where the two other guards stood, only now glancing back to see the first two following her. It was hard to maintain the imperious manner she’d assumed. Inside she was scared — scared and worried. If Toshikazu was right about Eichiro losing serious face over the attack by the “wreckers,” what was this meeting going to be about?
Without speaking, the four armored guards formed up in a square formation with Nikki in the center. Then
they started for the elevator.
*
Agatamori Eichiro’s office was on the thirty-eighth floor of the Nagara Building, only two floors below the penthouse floor devoted entirely to the corporation’s Chief Executive Officer, Kubota-san, and his personal staff. The office itself looked roughly north, toward where the trees that surrounded the Imperial Palace could be seen over the intervening buildings. Nikki was conscious of the view for only a second, before her full attention was captured by the man sitting behind the large teak desk.
Eichiro-san was a hard-looking man in his late thirties, with a strong, heavy jaw and a mouth that seemed to naturally settle into a frown of aloof displeasure. His black hair was cut in the latest Tokyo style — short, almost spiked, on top, but at the back and sides touching the collar of his dark, impeccably tailored suit. Nikki had initially met him when she’d been going through the hiring process on first joining Nagara. In fact, it was Eichiro, as senior manager of the Genetic Research Division, who had so brusquely welcomed her to the Nagara fold. At that time, it had been the man’s eyes that she’d most noticed. Dark and hard, they looked, as cold as the glass eye of the stuffed panther she’d seen in the Tokyo National History Museum. Cold, but alive too, always moving as though their owner was noticing everything, and glinting with a sharp understanding — and sometimes a grim amusement — about all that surrounded him. Those eyes didn’t seem quite human, she’d thought at the time.
And now those eyes were fixed on her, as she stood before Eichiro’s desk. The four security guards had escorted Nikki to the thirty-ninth floor, to an anteroom warded by a drone-like assistant. Hardly looking up from his desk, the drone had pressed a button, and the door into the inner office had swung open. This whole scene had been played out without anyone — the escorts, the drone, or Nikki herself — saying a word. Obviously everyone knew who she was and why she was there.
As the door opened, Nikki had taken another deep breath to try to still the fear that churned in her belly. Then, keeping her back straight and her face expressionless, she’d stepped forward into Eichiro’s office, leaving her armored escort in the outer office. The door had closed behind her with a metallic click that had a sense of finality about it.
Eichiro looked her up and down wordlessly. His thick forefinger, banded with a heavy gold ring, tapped — seemingly idly — at the teak desk. He glanced to his right, to the other man in the office sitting in one of the comfortable visitor chairs set around the desk. It was Iwao Yamato, the security chief. The chill in Nikki’s belly grew in intensity. As the two men — both very powerful within the structure of Nagara — glared at her, she felt the urge to back away, to hide somewhere.
But she schooled her face to immobility, hoping her eyes didn’t give away her fear. She bowed to Eichiro. “Konichi-wa, Eichiro-san,” she said. “Yamato-saw,” she added, repeating the bow, but not quite so deeply. “You sent for me?”
The division manager regarded her in silence for a few more seconds, his perpetual frown deepening marginally. Then he nodded sharply. “Thank you for accepting my invitation,” he said, a hint of irony tinge-ing his voice. He’s enjoying this, Nikki realized with a shock. Eichiro indicated a chair situated directly in front of his desk, but about six feet back, set apart from the rest of the office’s furniture. “Please be seated.”
Nikki settled herself into the comfortable chair, tried to relax as much as she could. She could feel a cold prickling along her hai
rline — the start of a cold sweat, maybe?
“We have some questions to ask you,” Eichiro told her flatly. “If you answer truthfully and completely, all will be well for you.” He turned to the security chief and nodded.
“Thank you, Eichiro-san.” Yamato stood, strolled slowly around to the front of the manager’s desk. All the while, he was regarding Nikki with a mix of curiosity and distaste — the expression of someone examining a particularly noxious specimen of spider in a museum case. Nikki was sure Yamato’s expression and his pacing were an act, designed to unsettle her. (And it’s working, she had to admit.) The situation seemed somehow familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it immediately.
Then it came to her. This was all like a scene out of a courtroom drama — the accused called to the witness stand, with the prosecuting attorney pacing in front of her like a caged tiger, while the judge watches calmly from behind his desk. For a moment she felt a nervous laugh bubbling in her throat. This is just too theatrical, she told herself. But then she looked at the faces of Eichiro and Yamato. They were dead serious about this. I’m on trial here. Her skin felt cold all over.
Yamato stopped directly in front of her, fixed her with a cold gaze. “Miss Carlson,” he began, taking great effort to pronounce the name correctly, “we would like you to tell us about your friends.” His voice was calm, reasonable — a drastic contrast to the hostility of his expression.
Nikki glanced over at Eichiro. He was leaning back in his chair, half-closed eyes regarding her over steepled fingers. His body language spoke of boredom, but she could see the glint of his eyes under the drooping lids. She knew he was paying close attention.
She returned her concentration to Yamato. “What friends do you mean?” she asked — although as she said it, she had the horrible intuition that she already knew.
Nigel Findley Page 7