by Emma Lathen
The answer came in a soft Texas accent. “Not yet.”
“I say we scrap Kruger,” said Baldie, sticking to the point at issue.
“That means Paul walks away with the nomination,” said the Texan. “Which guarantees losing the election. And if by any fluke Paul wins, we’re out in the rain.”
“There must be other people we could run against him.”
“Who?”
A depressed silence ensued until the Texan said: “Kruger’s the only one who’s got a hope in hell of waltzing in and snatching the convention from Paul’s grubby paws.”
“Like hell! We need Mr. Clean, not somebody getting accused of everything but pimping.”
But the Texan still had hopes.
“Look, maybe we’ll have to dump Kruger. I’m just saying it’s too early to tell. Sure, it looks like a big stink now. But it could pass. And you’ve got to admit, Kruger’s making the effort.”
“How do you think he’s doing?”
“Who knows?”
The well-connected lawyer in a small office in downtown Alexandria delivered his opinion.
“So far it looks like a draw. Kruger’s taken plenty of punishment, but he hasn’t been knocked out. We can live with that—temporarily.”
Alderman resented this heavy-handed prompting.
“I know the rules, Sam,” he said. “Why do you think I dragged Carl up to see Will Trowbridge?”
“I figure we’ve got two months—maximum!” Sam continued.
Alderman did not indicate much respect for the deadline.
“Look, in two months anything can happen,” he said. “I don’t care what they’re saying now; nobody can foretell what the Japs will come out with.”
Without changing expression, Sam contemplated the future.
“That could be good—or bad,” he agreed. “But do you think it’s smart, sitting around waiting for the ax to fall?”
“Who’s just sitting around?”
Kindly Sam studied him through the haze of blue cigar smoke.
“I hope that means you’ve got some more useful ideas, Benny.”
Alderman met his eyes.
“I’ve always got useful ideas.”
At the State Department, the response to Carl Kruger took concrete form. A polite request was dispatched to Tokyo for an official progress report. If the police investigation had produced no specific evidence against Kruger, surely it would be advisable for the Japanese government to issue a statement clarifying certain misconceptions.
“Specific evidence? We have no evidence at all!” Hayakawa said bitterly. “Have the Swiss told us anything?”
“No. And they justify their usual reluctance by pointing out that without knowing where the funds originated, they have no place to start,” his assistant replied.
Hayakawa had expected this. The Swiss were certainly not going to rummage through every numbered account in the country. “Then unless we receive later information from
them, all we know is that there was some sort of payoff, presumably to affect the Midland Research hearings. Ushiba learned about it. Do we know how he got his hands on that letter?”
The assistant broke off to cough delicately. “Ushiba requested material to prepare his synopsis. Files came in from everywhere. Including Mr. Matsuda’s office—and that of the minister.”
“Just what we need,” Hayakawa grunted. “All right. A page could have been carelessly left in somebody’s file.”
“No matter how Ushiba found that German letter, it is puzzling he could read it. Wouldn’t he need a translation?”
Hayakawa had already considered the point. “Not necessarily. The page consisted largely of standard transfer terms. Ushiba was familiar enough with financial documents to suspect that he was holding dynamite. He could have deciphered the rest with a dictionary. But all this is peripheral. The major question is what Ushiba intended to do with it.”
“He had already put it into an envelope.” The assistant looked pious. “No doubt he was going to report his discovery to the proper authorities.”
The doubt was palpable.
“But even if you are correct, how did anybody learn what Ushiba was up to? And above all, why go to the extreme of murdering him?”
Japan’s scandals had all been free of bloodshed so far.
“Furthermore,” the assistant said, “we are talking about businessmen. When they are thwarted, they do not seek vengeance or fly into blind rages. They simply try to make money some other way.”
“However,” said Hayakawa, “one man there had everything to lose. Mr. Matsuda is neither an industrialist nor a powerful politician. For him exposure could mean personal disgrace, possibly even jail. What’s more, Matsuda knew where his files had gone. If he had lost that page, he would know exactly where to look for it.”
The assistant advanced cautiously. “There is another way Matsuda could have learned where his letter was. Ushiba
might have told him. Perhaps Ushiba was planning to use the information to avoid transfer.”
“That would imply that Ushiba’s wants were very modest, considering the sums involved in these MR hearings,” said Hayakawa. “No, I think it is more realistic to assume that Ushiba was demanding money.”
“Then he wouldn’t have approached Matsuda; he would have gone straight to the source,” the assistant objected.
Hayakawa shook his head. “Ushiba was a stupid man. He seems to have made a mistake.”
As a consequence of this discussion, the inspector forwarded a confidential report that left no room for misunderstanding. The police thought they knew who had taken the bribe and who had murdered Mr. Ushiba, but they were in no position to proceed against him. Furthermore, they could not single out which company, by suborning Matsuda, had tried to destroy the integrity of MITI. There were three equally likely contenders. . . .
The minister stopped reading when he came to the only sentence that mattered. Hayakawa’s report gave him no alternative. Some statement to placate the Americans was now necessary. But it was going to be very carefully crafted.
Accordingly the next morning his spokesman read expressionlessly:
“. . . no grounds implicating Lackawanna Electric Industries. The same is true of Yonezawa Trading Company and Shima Trading Company. The ministry wishes to go on record as affirming that in our many years of experience with these two distinguished firms, there has never been the slightest suggestion of impropriety.”
Taking a deep breath, he continued. “The ministry has every confidence that Yonezawa and Shima are maintaining the highest ethical standards.”
Chapter 13
Politicians may work day and night, but that is not the way of the normal world. At six-thirty that Friday afternoon, the offices of Shima Computers, U.S.A., located in a San Francisco high-rise, were approaching total somnolence. Most of the personnel had escaped to the pleasures of a summer weekend, leaving behind only isolated spots of activity.
It was a clerk crossing the deserted reception area who took the initial brunt of the invasion. Without warning the elevator doors slid open and an army of strange men trampled forward. While the clerk goggled, the leader waved his troops to strategic points before turning to her.
“Federal marshals,” he announced.
When the only response was a blank stare, he made a suggestion.
“Maybe you’d better tell someone.”
By the time the clerk fled back to her employer, she was incoherent.
“There are a bunch of police out there,” she stammered.
The service manager, who was itching to finish his last letter and depart, was not sympathetic.
“What are you babbling about?”
“I think they want to arrest someone,” she continued wildly. “You’ve got to come.”
Still dubious, he rose and followed her. Before turning the corner, he saw intruders seeping into every corner of the company.
“What the hell do you people think you’r
e doing?” he demanded as he advanced into the reception room.
“We have a search warrant,” the marshal explained, offering a document.
For this there was only one answer.
“Jenny, get someone from the law department up here,” the service manager ordered, then stalked off with an air of finality.
But the law department valued its weekends too. Only a young specialist in patent law was available to pound upstairs and read the search warrant.
“This seems to be in order,” he said gravely, sinking the fact that he had no way of knowing.
“Then we’ll need keys to everything—drawers, file cabinets, safes.”
Scowling in furious thought, the young man merely said: “You’ll have to talk to the man in charge. Jenny, call Mr. Reese down here.”
Nobody on the payroll doubted that Fred Reese was the man in charge. When he had been hired as executive vice-president of the new organization, he had been pleased with the salary and the responsibility. It had taken only three weeks for the fly in his ointment to materialize, in the shape of Mr. Yasuhiro Kawate.
The president sent over from Tokyo had not been designed by nature to be a workaholic. For over twenty years with Shima Trading Company he had pretended to relish long hours and sustained endeavor. Now he was ready to enjoy the fruits of an overseas assignment. From the moment of arrival, Kawate and his wife had become joyful captives of the California style. She abandoned domestic chores in favor of socializing, and he took to the sea. His pride and joy was a forty-two-foot sloop, and his most cherished achievement was membership in a select yacht club.
This was bad enough, but what really fueled Reese’s resentment was that Kawate was not content to stay away. At unpredictable intervals he would descend, alighting at random anywhere in the company. Determined to maintain himself in Tokyo’s good graces, he detected imperfections in Reese’s system, instituted dazzling improvements, and then departed, leaving havoc and confusion in his wake.
Inevitably Reese’s first thought as he confronted the marshals was irritation at Kawate’s absence. Nonetheless he was mindful of his duty to give battle.
“So you’ve got some kind of summons,” he snapped. “Then you’re supposed to mail it. This isn’t the way to do things.”
“There’s also the matter of the search warrant. I’m still waiting for those keys,” the marshal replied.
For some time the young lawyer had been plucking at his employer’s sleeve. He finally succeeded in drawing Reese into a corner.
“Look,” he said in a lowered voice, “I don’t know what’s going on, but this has got to be a show of force. They don’t send out half the marshals in the district simply to serve a summons. The feds must be mad at us.”
“Or it’s one of their colossal foul-ups,” Reese growled, having hastily reviewed all corporate delinquencies known to him. “You know the way their drug people are always coming down on the wrong house.”
“But they’ve got a grand jury indictment.”
Frowning, Reese marched over to the marshal. “What’s the underlying complaint supposed to be?” he asked.
“Export control violations.”
“Ah ha! That proves it’s a mistake. We’re a sales and service outfit for the U.S. and Canada.”
Unmoved, the marshal began to intone: “Regarding shipments to Tokyo on January 7 of this year, February 11, February 27, March 14, and so on.”
“You have got to be out of your mind. We import from Japan, we don’t—”
Reese broke off abruptly as he recalled an almost forgotten instance of Kawate’s officious intermeddling. The president had set up a small office, under his own supervision, for occasional sales of technical items to Japan.
The marshal, misconstruing Reese’s silence, thought the time was ripe for action.
“And now I have to serve this summons, as well as several subpoenas for your staff,” he said, producing a fresh sheaf.
Unlike the young lawyer, Reese did not pretend to read the entire document with which he was supplied.
“I’m afraid I’m only the vice-president. The man you want is our chief executive, Mr. Yasuhiro Kawate,” he explained, the light of unholy glee dawning on his countenance. “Jenny, give these men the address of that yacht club.”
There is a limit to both the viciousness and the omniscience of the federal government. The young lawyer had been correct in scenting a show of force. The masterminds in the Department of Justice had deliberately staged their raid so as to demoralize a fragmentary staff. But never had they contemplated swinging the iron fist of naked power at the season’s most gala wedding.
As luck would have it, however, eight hundred guests had arrived at the Hebrides Point Yacht Club that afternoon, together with a host of society reporters and photographers from every life-style magazine on the West Coast. Under a cloudless blue sky, the middle-aged were doing honor to the occasion with floating chiffons and impeccable mess jackets. The young, lithe and tanned, were making bolder fashion statements. Circulating through the crowd were bridesmaids in Victorian costume and ushers sporting Beau Brummell shirts complete with foaming jabots. Even the club members going about their usual pastimes had been inspired to do their bit. Every craft at the boat slips was flying colored pennants.
It had been a picture-perfect wedding for hours. A lieutenant governor kissed the bride, the commodore of the club danced with her, the wedding cake struck an appropriate nautical note. By seven o’clock the reception was beginning to wind down, as the guests waited for the bride to appear in her going-away outfit. Many of them were stationed on the portico of the clubhouse, and the usual wedding prattle was flowing freely.
“. . . of course they’ve been living together for two years. “
“The lobster was great. I’m going to ask Gloria why ours never tastes that way.”
“Did you see the brother’s wife? I wonder where he found her.”
“Myself, I think Baccarat is a mistake. I never give break ables now that they move around so much. Silver is always safe.”
Several hundred people observed a cavalcade of cars sweeping into the driveway. When a squad of obvious officials alighted, rumors were happily bandied from one group to another. The groom’s father was being arrested for insider trading. The brother’s wife had jumped bail. The commodore’s past had finally caught up with him.
It was something of a disappointment when the action moved out of earshot. Nonetheless cameras were hoisted to record a scene that would enliven Saturday’s front pages.
An inner circle of dark business suits was surrounded by a sea of decorative wedding guests. At the exact center of at tention stood Mr. Yasuhiro Kawate. Tumbling ashore from a canopied deck chair, he had been caught in his full glory as an old salt. His tidy little head was crowned by a snowy yachting cap, his meager shanks protruded from crisp Bermuda shorts, and his hand still clutched one of his famous margaritas.
Even without pictures, there would have been banner headlines.
According to the indictment, Shima Computers had shipped sensitive military technology behind the Iron Curtain. And It had done this, not once, not twice, but seven times over a course of six months. There had been forged invoices, fraudulent claims of end-user, and systematic bribery to customs officials in Tokyo. Shima had violated the export-control reg ulations of the United States, the trading laws of Japan, and the rules of the Paris-based Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM), which governs exports to Communist countries.
The Investigation had been started by the Pentagon, which had already alerted Tokyo. While federal marshals were making merry in San Francisco, Japanese police had been searching thirteen offices of the Shima Trading Company.
Nothing is more calculated to make the average congressman see red than security lapses by a purported ally. On Saturday night many elected officials were letting fly. The suggested reprisals covered a wide range of penalties, starting with the obvious.
Others, however, had learned to hit where it hurts.
“Take away Shima’s corporate charter, and toss them out of the country.”
“To hell with that. They’re just a subsidiary.” The speaker’s eyes brightened. “Let’s ban Shima Trading from selling in the U.S. I’m talking Shima cars, Shima motorcycles, Shima TVs.”
When someone discovered that Shima Power Tools had had the effrontery to bid on a U.S. contract, his wrath boiled over. “And they can’t be a federal supplier for the next ten years.”
“Why stop at selling?” demanded a big thinker. “Make it so they can’t sell, they can’t manufacture, they can’t invest.”
The mathematicians on the Hill had numbers at their fingertips.
“Did you know that Shima does one billion annually in the U.S.?”
“We do it my way, and we can close down ten thousand jobs over there. After what they’ve done to my district, it’ll be a pleasure.”
The torrent of threats naturally reflected the grievances of the speakers. But one of them, Carl Kruger’s old friend Mike, was keeping his eye firmly on the ball.
Poised on the steps of the Capitol, he responded gravely and calmly to television’s questions.
“As you know, I have nothing but admiration for the achievements of most Japanese trading companies. However, when there’s a rotten apple in the barrel, you have to take action. You can’t do business with a company that systematically bribes its own country’s civil servants.’’
This was not the aspect of the situation capturing most American viewers, but then Mike was not speaking to them.
Chapter 14
For Lackawanna, the Shima indictment was the biggest miracle since the parting of the Red Sea. Carl Kruger had been busy late into the evening. By the next morning he was triumphant.
“I cabled MITI an invitation to a demonstration in Birmingham next Monday. They’re going to have a hell of a time trying to duck it.”
“That testimonial to Shima’s integrity has backfired beautifully,” Pamela Webb chortled. “Without it, things wouldn’t be half as good.”