"But there are other things going on, and if you have the patience to take a longer view--"long view had already been tried, and Newton was grateful for the fact that his client had good-enough language skills to catch the difference--" there are other options to be considered."
"And what might those be?" Binichi Murakami asked acidly. He was upset enough to allow his anger to show for once. It was just too much. He'd come to Washington in the hope that he could personally speak out against this disastrous bill, but instead had found himself besieged with reporters whose questions had only made clear the futility of his mission. And for that reason he'd been away from home for weeks, despite all sorts of entreaties to return to Japan for some urgent meetings with his friend Kozo Matsuda.
"Governments change," Newton replied, explaining on for a minute or so.
"Such a trivial thing as that?"
"You know, someday it's going to happen in your country. You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise." Newton didn't understand how they could fail to grasp something so obvious. Surely their marketing people told them how many cars were bought in America by women. Not to mention the best lady's shaver in the world. Hell, one of Murakami's subsidiaries made it. So much of their marketing effort was aimed at attracting women customers, and yet they pretended that the same factors would never come to be in their own country. It was, Newton thought, a particularly strange blind spot.
"It really could ruin Durling?" The President was clearly getting all sorts of political capital from TRA.
"Sure, if it's managed properly. He's holding up a major criminal investigation, isn't he?"
"No, from what you said, he's asked to delay it for--"
"For political reasons, Binichi." Newton did not often first-name his client. The guy didn't like it. Stuffed shirt. But he paid very well, didn't he? "Binichi, you don't want to get caught playing with a criminal matter, especially for political reasons. Especially where the abuse of women is involved. It's an eccentricity of the American political system," he explained patiently.
"We can't meddle with that, can we?" It was an ill-considered question. He'd never quite meddled at this level before, that was all.
"What do you think you pay me for?"
Murakami leaned back and lit up a cigarette. He was the only person allowed to smoke in this office. "How would we go about it?"
"Give me a few days to work on that? For the moment, take the next flight home. You're just hurting yourself by being here, okay?" Newton paused. "You also need to understand, this is the most complicated project I've ever done for you. Dangerous, too," the lobbyist added.
Mercenary! Murakami raged behind eyes that were again impassive and thoughtful. Well, at least he was effective at it.
"One of my colleagues is in New York. I plan to see him and then fly home from New York."
"Fine. Just keep a real low profile, okay?"
Murakami stood and walked to the outer office, where an aide and a bodyguard waited. He was a physically imposing man, tall for a Japanese at five-ten, with jet-black hair and a youthful face that belied his fifty-seven years. He also had a better-than-average track record for doing business in America, which made the current situation all the more offensive to him. He had never purchased less than a hundred million dollars' worth of American products in any year for the past decade, and he had occasionally spoken out, quietly, for allowing America greater access to his country's food market. The son and grandson of farmers, it appalled him that so many of his countrymen would want to do that sort of work. It was so damnably inefficient, after all, and the Americans, for all their laziness, were genuine artists at growing things. What a pity they didn't know how to plant a decent garden, which was Murakami's other passion in life.
The office building was on Sixteenth Street, only a few blocks from the White House, and, stepping out on the sidewalk he could look down and see the imposing building. Not Osaka Castle, but it radiated power.
"You Jap cocksucker!"
Murakami turned to see the face, angry and white, a working-class man by the look of him, and was so startled that he didn't have time to take offense. His bodyguard moved quickly to interpose himself between his boss and the American.
"You're gonna get yours, asshole!" the American said. He started to walk away.
"Wait. What have I done to harm you?" Murakami asked, still too surprised to be angry.
Had he known America better, the industrialist might have recognized that the man was one of Washington's homeless, and like most of them, a man with a problem. In this case, he was an alcoholic who had lost both his job and his family to drink, and his only contact with reality came from disjointed conversations with people similarly afflicted. Because of that, whatever outrages he held were artificially magnified. His plastic cup was full of an inexpensive beer, and because he remembered once working in the Chrysler assembly plant in Newark, Delaware, he decided that he didn't need the beer as much as he needed to be angry about losing his job, whenever that had been.... And so, forgetting that his own difficulties had brought him to this low station in life, he turned and tossed the beer all over the three men in front of him, then moved on without a word, feeling so good about what he'd done that he didn't mind losing his drink.
The bodyguard started to move after him. In Japan he would have been able to hammer the bakayaro to the ground. A policeman would be summoned, and this fool would be detained, but the bodyguard knew he was on unfamiliar ground, and held back, then turned to see if perhaps this had been a setup to distract him from a more serious attack. He saw his employer standing erect, his face first frozen in shock, then outrage, as his expensive English-made coat dripped with half a liter of cheap, tasteless American beer. Without a word, Murakami got into the waiting car, which headed off to Washington National Airport. The bodyguard, similarly humiliated, took his seat in the front of the car.
A man who had won everything in his life on merit, who remembered life on a postage-stamp of a vegetable farm, who had studied harder than anyone else to get ahead, to win a place at Tokyo University, who had started at the bottom and worked his way to the top, Murakami had often had his doubts and criticisms of America, but he had deemed himself a fair and rational actor on trade issues. As so often happens in life, however, it was an irrelevancy that would change his mind.
They are barbarians, he told himself, boarding his chartered jet for the flight to New York.
"The Prime Minister is going to fall," Ryan told the President about the same time, a few blocks away.
"How sure are we of that?"
"Sure as we can be," Jack replied, taking his seat. "We have a couple of field officers working on something over there, and that's what they're hearing from people."
"State hasn't said that yet," Durling objected somewhat innocently.
"Mr. President, come on now," Ryan said, holding a folder in his lap. "You know this is going to have some serious ramifications. You know Koga is sitting on a coalition made up of six different factions, and it won't take much to blow that apart on him." And us, Jack didn't add.
"Okay. So what?" Durling observed, having had his polling data updated again this very day.
"So the guy most likely to replace him is Hiroshi Goto. He doesn't like us very much. Never has."
"He talks big and tough," the President said, "but the one time I met him he looked like a typical blusterer. Weak, vain, not much substance to him."
"And something else." Ryan filled the President in on one of the spinoffs of Operation SANDALWOOD.
Under other circumstances Roger Durling might have smiled, but he had Ed Kealty sitting less than a hundred feet from him.
"Jack, how hard is it for a guy not to fuck around behind his wife's back?"
"Pretty easy in my case," Jack answered. "I'm married to a surgeon, remember?" The President laughed, then turned serious.
"It's something we can use on the son of a bitch, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir." Ryan didn
't have to add, but only with the greatest possible care, that on top of the Oak Ridge incident, it could well ignite a firestorm of public indignation. Niccolo Machiavelli himself had warned against this sort of thing.
"What are we planning to do about this Norton girl?" Durling asked.
"Clark and Chavez--"
"The guys who bagged Corp, right?"
"Yes, sir. They're over there right now. I want them to meet the girl and offer her a free ride home."
"Debrief once she gets back?"
Ryan nodded. "Yes, sir."
Durling smiled. "I like it. Good work."
"Mr. President, we're getting what we want, probably even a little more than what we really wanted," Jack cautioned. "The Chinese general Sun Tzu once wrote that you always leave your enemy a way out--you don't press a beaten enemy too hard."
"In the One-Oh-One, they told us to kill them all and count the bodies." The President grinned. It actually pleased him that Ryan was now secure enough in his position to feel free to offer gratuitous advice. "This is out of your field, Jack. This isn't a national-security matter."
"Yes, sir. I know that. Look, I was in the money business a few months ago. I do have a little knowledge about international business."
Durling conceded the point with a nod. "Okay, go on. It's not like I've been getting any contrarian advice, and I suppose I ought to hear a little of it."
"We don't want Koga to go down, sir. He's a hell of a lot easier to deal with than Goto will be. Maybe a quiet statement from the Ambassador, something about how TRA gives you authority to act, but--"
The President cut him off. "But I'm not really going to do it?" He shook his head. "You know I can't do that. It would have the effect of cutting Al Trent off at the ankles, and I can't do that. It would look like I was double-dealing the unions, and I can't do that either."
"Do you really plan to implement TRA fully?"
"Yes, I do. Only for a few months. I have to shock the bastards, Jack. We will have a fair-trade deal, after twenty years of screwing around, but they have to understand that we're serious for once. It's going to be hard on them, but in a few months they're going to be believers, and then they can change their laws a little, and we'll do the same, and things will settle down to a trading system that's completely fair for all parties."
"You really want my opinion?"
Durling nodded again. "That's what I pay you for. You think we're pushing too hard."
"Yes, sir. We don't want Koga to go down, and we have to offer him something juicy if we want to save him. If you want to think long-term on this, you have to consider who you want to do business with."
Durling lifted a memo from his desk. "Brett Hanson told me the same thing, but he's not quite as worried about Koga as you are."
"By this time tomorrow," Ryan promised, "he will be."
"You can't even walk the streets here," Murakami snarled.
Yamata had a whole floor of the Plaza Athenee reserved for himself and his senior staff. The industrialists were alone in a sitting room, coats and ties off, a bottle of whiskey on the table.
"One never could, Binichi," Yamata replied. "Here we are the gaijin. You never seem to remember that."
"Do you know how much business I do here, how much I buy here?" the younger man demanded. He could still smell the beer. It had gotten on his shirt, but he was too angry to change clothes. He wanted the reminder of the lesson he'd learned only a few hours earlier.
"And what of myself?" Yamata asked. "Over the last few years I've put six billion yen into a trading company here. I finished that only a short time ago, as you will recall. Now I wonder if I'll ever get it back."
"They wouldn't do that."
"Your confidence in these people is touching, and does you credit," his host observed. "When the economy of our country falls into ruin, do you suppose they will let me move here to manage my American interests? In 1941 they froze our assets here."
"This is not 1941."
"No, it is not, Murakami-san. It is far worse today. We had not so far to fall then."
"Please," Chavez said, draining the last of his beer. "In 1941 my grandfather was fighting Fascists outside St. Petersburg--"
"Leningrad, you young pup!" Clark snarled, sitting next to him. "These young ones, they lose all their respect for the past," he explained to their two hosts.
One was a senior public-relations official from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the other a director of their aircraft division.
"Yes," Seigo Ishii agreed. "You know, members of my family helped design the fighters our Navy used. I once met Saburo Sakai and Minoru Genda."
Ding opened another round of bottles and poured like the good underling he was, dutifully serving his master, Ivan Sergeyevich Klerk. The beer was really pretty good here, especially since their hosts were picking up the tab, Chavez thought, keeping his peace and watching a master at work.
"I know these names," Clark said. "Great warriors, but"--he held up a finger--"they fought against my countrymen. I remember that, too."
"Fifty years," the PR man pointed out. "And your country was also different then."
"That is true, my friends, that is true," Clark admitted, his head lolling to one side. Chavez thought he was overdoing the alcohol stuff.
"Your first time here, yes?"
"Correct."
"Your impressions?" Ishii asked.
"I love your poetry. It is very different from ours. I could write a book on Pushkin, you know. Perhaps someday I will, but a few years ago I started learning about yours. You see, our poetry is intended to convey a whole series of thoughts--often tell a complex story--but yours is far more subtle and delicate, like--how do I say this? Like a flash picture, yes? Perhaps there is one you could explain to me. I can see the picture, but not understand the significance. How does it go?" Clark asked himself drunkenly. "Ah, yes: 'Plum blossoms bloom, and pleasure-women buy new scarves in a brothel room.' Now," he asked the PR guy, "what is the meaning of that?"
Ding handled the eye contact with Ishii. It was amusing in a way. Confusion at first, then you could just about hear the eyeballs click when the code phrase sliced through his mind like the killing stroke of a rapier. Sasaki's eyes zeroed in on Clark, then noticed that it was Ding who was maintaining eye contact.
That's right. You're back on the payroll, buddy.
"Well, you see, it's the contrast," the PR official explained. "You have the pleasant image of attractive women doing something--oh, feminine, is that the word? Then the end, you see that they are prostitutes, trapped in a--"
"Prison," Ishii said, suddenly sober. "They are trapped into doing something. And suddenly the setting and the picture are not as pleasant as they seem at all."
"Ah, yes," Clark said with a smile. "That is entirely sensible. Thank you." A friendly nod to acknowledge the important lesson.
Goddamn, but Mr. C was smooth, Chavez thought. This spy stuff had its moments. Ding almost felt sorry for Ishii, but if the dumb son of a bitch had betrayed his country before, well, no sense in shedding any tears for him now. The axiom in CIA was simple, if somewhat cruel: once a traitor, always a traitor. The corresponding aphorism in the FBI was even crueler, which was odd. The FBI boys were usually so upright and clean-cut. Once a cocksucker, always a cocksucker.
"Is it possible?" Murakami asked.
"Possible? It's child's play."
"But the effects ... " Yamata's idea had obvious panache, but ...
"The effects are simple. The damage to their economy will prevent them from building up the industries they need to replace our products. Their consumers will recover from the initial shock and, needing products which their own corporations cannot manufacture, they will again buy them from us." If Binichi thought he was going to get the whole story, that was his problem.
"I think not. You underestimate the Americans' anger at this unfortunate incident. You must also factor in the political dimension--"
"Koga is finished. That is d
ecided," Yamata interrupted coldly.
"Goto?" Murakami asked. It wasn't much of a question. He followed his country's political scene as much as any man.
"Of course."
An angry gesture. "Goto is a fool. Everywhere he walks he's following his penis. I wouldn't trust him to run my father's farm."
"You could say that of any of them. Who really manages our country's affairs? What more could we want in a prime minister, Binichi?" Raizo asked with a jolly laugh.
"They have one like that in their government, too," Murakami noted darkly, pouring himself another generous jolt of Chivas and wondering what Yamata was really talking about. "I've never met the man, but he sounds like a swine."
"Who is that?"
"Kealty, their Vice President. You know, this upstanding President of theirs is covering it up, too."
Yamata leaned back in his chair. "I don't understand."
Murakami filled him in. The whiskey didn't impede his memory a jot, his host noted. Well, though a cautious man, and often an overly generous one in his dealings with foreigners, he was one of Yamata's true peers, and though they often disagreed on things, there was genuine respect between them.
"That is interesting. What will your people do about it?"
"They are thinking about it," Binichi replied with an eloquent arch of the eyebrows.
"You trust Americans on something like this? The best of them are ronin, and you know what the worst are ..." Then Yamata-san paused and took a few seconds to consider this information more fully. "My friend, if the Americans can take down Koga ..."
Murakami lowered his head for a moment. The smell of the thrown beer was stronger than ever. The insolence of that street creature! For that matter, what of the insolence of the President? He could cripple an entire country with his vanity and his clearly feigned anger. Over what? An accident, that was all. Had the company not honorably assumed responsibility? Had it not promised to look after the survivors?
"It is a large and dangerous thing you propose, my friend."
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