Conspiracy (11 page)

"Sato is nothing but a warmonger and a demagogue," he shouted into the microphone. "It took us decades to recover from the previous round of leaders like Sato, who launched us into the Second World War and nearly destroyed the country."

There was a huge round of applause.

"We cannot permit—"

Masaki felt a wave of heat behind him and stopped in midsentence. From the front of the audience rose cries of "Fire!" Flames were shooting up backstage from the area where scenery flats were stacked.

Once the crowd saw what was happening, they bolted for the doors. Panic ensued. Loud screams filled the theater. Cries of help and anguish erupted as some fell in the pushing and shoving of the frightened mob.

Masaki jumped off the stage to get away from the fire. He too was swept up in the panic, and he tried pushing his way to the closest side door. On the stage, the crackling flames grew higher.

Masaki was in the center of a pushing crowd of people when he suddenly felt a hard blow to his head. "What the...?" he cried out. Then he lost consciousness and fell to the floor.

The crowd tried to move around him. Terasawa had watched while one of his friends in the Yakuza had struck Masaki. Once the speaker was on the ground, Terasawa pushed against the surging mob toward the speaker. Terasawa was wearing specially made shoes for tonight with steel plates in the heels and toes. Once he reached Masaki's unconscious body, he raised one foot and slammed it down on Masaki's head. Then the other foot. He was certain that the first blow had fractured Masaki's skull. The second killed the man.

 

 

 

Chapter 7

 

"Ah, Miss Ferrari," Carlos, the maitre d' at the Four Seasons, said as Taylor descended the large wooden staircase and approached the entrance to the dining room on Friday morning. "Mr. Fujimura has already arrived."

The Washington power breakfast was in full bloom in one of the city's most prestigious restaurants. Thick beige wall coverings and a high ceiling that opened to a more casual garden restaurant above muffled the sounds. The tables were spaced to permit confidential conversation. As Carlos led Taylor to the far side of the restaurant, she nodded to the secretary of the interior and a senator from Maine.

Taylor stopped in front of a Japanese man dressed in an expensive-looking dark business suit, white shirt, and tie. Taylor bowed, and he bowed back.

When they sat down, Fujimura, behind heavy black-framed glasses, studied Taylor. He remembered being struck by her good looks when he met her six years ago during the Kyoto conference on global warming, as well as by her intelligence and her genuine interest in the Japanese way of life. He was impressed that she had not only studied Japanese in college, but had kept up her proficiency with a private tutor since that time. She had grown into an elegant-looking woman, even at eight in the morning, and she had honed her legal skills, which was why he called on her for many of his clients' legal matters in the United States.

"I'm sorry I was late," Taylor said.

"I was early. I appreciate your adjusting your busy schedule to meet me on short notice."

Fujimura nodded to a waiter, who rushed over, took their breakfast order, and quickly departed. "I have a new matter for you," Fujimura said in English that was precise, though a little stiff. "M. H. Heavy Industries wants to buy East Texas Enterprises, a large national gas producer headquartered in Houston. Eight facilities are involved throughout the United States. I would like you to visit each of them within the next thirty days, give me a report on all potential liabilities, and develop a structure for the acquisition."

Taylor felt her stomach churning. She couldn't possibly do what Fujimura wanted in the next thirty days, not with the campaign going down to the wire. She selected her words carefully. "May I suggest a variation of your proposal?"

She allowed a flicker of annoyance in his eyes to pass before she continued. "I'll be in charge of the investigation. I'll make all of the decisions and recommendations, but my partner, Philip Harrison, with whom you've worked before, will organize and handle the visits. He'll develop a proposal for structuring the transaction."

Fujimura's face showed no emotion. "You're my lawyer," he said. "You understand what I want and need. That's why I came to Blank, Porter, and Harrison. There are lots of other lawyers out there." He raised a hand and waved it.

Taylor's knees were trembling under the table, and she sucked in her breath.
That's all I need right now is to lose Fujimura's business. I'll be asked to take early retirement from the law firm. Real early. I've got to find a way to keep it together for another month.

Taylor forced a smile and pressed ahead. "As you know, Philip is very experienced in this type of transaction. He'll organize his regular team. They're fast and efficient. He'll report directly to me."

Fujimura deliberately sipped his coffee, considering the matter.

There was a long silence as Taylor prayed,
Let him go along with this.

Finally Fujimura said, "That'll be fine."

By the time they had eaten their continental breakfast, he had finished telling her about the transaction. "A box with all of the relevant documents about the acquisition and the plants involved will be delivered to your office this morning," he said. "For much of the next month you can reach me at the Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles, where I have other business, although I expect to be flying back and forth between Tokyo and Los Angeles a number of times."

"I'll give you periodic reports of our progress during the month," she said encouragingly.

"Good. Now tell me about the Mississippi case."

Taylor relaxed. Here she was on stronger ground. "The briefs are in. I'll argue the case December tenth in the state supreme court."

"What do you think of our chances?"

"On the legal merits, I like our case, but I'll warn you, Mississippi is provincial."

She didn't have to spell out what she meant. Fujimura was used to discrimination against Japanese companies in the American courts.

He began looking around to signal the waiter for the check, and she could tell that they had completed his agenda. Yet she had another subject to raise with him. Before doing so, she checked the tables on either side. At one of them four men were engaged in an animated business discussion. At the other was a man who appeared to be in his fifties, with a strikingly beautiful blonde who couldn't be more than twenty-five, Taylor guessed. They were holding hands under the table. Harrison frequently lectured her to be careful what she said in public places, but if she and Fujimura kept their voices down, no one else could hear a thing.

"I read Alex Glass's article in the
New York Times
this morning about Sato's visit to the shrine and Masaki's death at the rally," Taylor said. "Can you help me understand what's happening in Japan?"

He lowered his head and peered at her through those thick glasses. "Your question implies that the two are related, that someone from Sato's crowd was responsible for Masaki's death." He sounded defensive, which didn't surprise her. She was a foreigner asking him about a Japanese internal matter. Though he was sophisticated and spent considerable time in the United States and Europe on business, he still had that clannish allegiance to his island home.

Treading carefully, she said, "According to the article, the police cannot account for the cause of the fire."

Fujimura held out his hands. "It's still early in the investigation. Too early to draw any conclusions."

"Fair enough, but let me ask you this: If Senator Boyd is elected, do you think he will have to deal with Sato as the next Japanese prime minister?"

Deep furrows appeared on Fujimura's forehead. "I don't know," he said softly, trying to mask his concern. "Our economy has been bad for so long that people are becoming desperate. You're a student of history. You know that desperate people sometimes turn to people with radical solutions. A month ago I would have told you that Sato had no chance."

"And now?"

"As you Americans say, it's too close to call."

* * *

"We're in big trouble," President Webster said as he tossed the results of the latest
Wall Street Journal
poll on his desk in disgust. "Jesus, I can't believe we blew that big a lead."

Seated at his desk in the Oval Office, the president scanned the three men in front of him: Hugh McDermott, the attorney general and the president's campaign manager; Darren Boudreau, the president's political adviser; and Pug Thompson, in charge of special projects.

In contrast to the scholarly Boudreau, on leave from his job as a political science professor at Georgetown, with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, Pug Thompson was a street fighter. That was how he had gotten his nickname, trying to escort a recalcitrant witness out of a congressional hearing room after the chairman ordered the guards to lock the doors. Thompson had decided to punch his way out. Both he and the witness escaped the room, but Thompson suffered a broken nose in the process. It had been poorly set, and it was now the first thing anyone noticed when they looked at him.

"It's the economy," McDermott said. "But there's no need to panic. The average of the six private polls we ran in the last week shows us down by only two percent, with a margin of error of one to three. Virtually a dead heat. Isn't that right, Darren?"

Unconvinced, Webster scowled. "What bothers me is the trend. We lost ground last week in practically every part of the country. It definitely wasn't a good week for us."

"You've still got the advantage. You're the incumbent," McDermott replied calmly. "Let's stick to our game plan. All you have to do, Bill, is continue to act presidential. Just do your job. I promise you that next week the numbers will be different."

"You're betting I can turn it around in the debate Monday night?"

McDermott nodded. "I know it. I got a report from someone who attended the dinner last night in Chicago where Boyd spoke. The guy's losing it. He wasn't focused. Something's bothering him. When he gets in front of that national audience at the debate, he'll come off like Nixon in the first Kennedy debate. You mark my words."

Thompson shook his head in disbelief. These guys were delusional. "I feel like a minority of one, but I think something more radical is required."

"Like what?" Webster asked.

Thompson was ready. "Sticking to the issues and acting presidential isn't doing the trick. The economy's killing us, and we're losing ground fast. My proposal is that we move away from the issues, and we attack Boyd personally."

Furious, McDermott shot Thompson a dirty look, but he turned away. "How? For what?" McDermott asked, sounding skeptical and annoyed.

"We've got two possibilities," he continued. "One, we've got reason to believe that when Boyd's oldest son, Donny, was a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he was arrested on a marijuana possession charge after the cops raided a frat-house party. It was all kept quiet. The kid did public-service work, and the misdemeanor conviction was expunged. But we can find witnesses, pay them to come forward, and resurrect it. It would make Boyd look like a fraud with his big campaign promises about a war on drugs and a new crime bill."

"Great," McDermott said scornfully. "It would also give Boyd's camp every parent in America who's upset about what his child has done, which is almost everyone with kids. Whose side are you on?"

Pug looked at the president and Boudreau for support, but all he found was an expressionless silence.

"Number two," he continued, "we begin carefully and systematically leaking information to the press that Boyd, who holds himself up as a great family man, has been having an affair for the last ten years with his adviser, Taylor Ferrari."

McDermott raised his eyebrows. "Has he?"

Pug looked at Boudreau, who responded, "We don't know for sure. I told Pug that they're very close."

"Meaning you don't know at all."

"They spend so much time together," Pug fired back, "people would believe it."

McDermott felt the perspiration under his arms beginning to wet his shirt. Jesus, he did not want a public morality issue raised under any circumstances.

"That is one shitty idea," he said. "Forget it. If we don't have the facts, it'll boomerang. The press will figure out where the rumors came from."

Pug refused to back off. "We could hire a detective to see if the facts are there."

"NFW. No fucking way. Who's paying you? Boyd? Stuff like that will only lose votes if it comes out."

"Good God," Pug said in a voice dripping with sarcasm. "You're holier than the pope."

Wanting to shift away from an escalating verbal battle, McDermott turned toward the president. "It's your call, Bill," he said. "Personally, I vote for sticking with the current game plan and tabling these ideas for now, but you're the boss."

The president rolled the issue around in his mind for a moment and wrinkled his nose. "I'm with Hugh on this. No dirty tricks. We'll win this fair and square, or we won't win."