The Nicholas Linnear Novels (79 page)

“You missed your calling, Linnear-san,” Sato said. “You should have been a politician.”

Nicholas wondered who was lying on the table against the far wall.

“Lie down, please, gentlemen,” Sato said. “You have not yet completed your course in relaxation.”

They did as he bade, and immediately two more young women emerged from the semidarkness. Nicholas felt the splash and roll of oil, then skilled hands kneading his muscles.

“Perhaps you are already wondering why these girls are not Japanese, Linnear-san? Do not think I am not nationalistic. However, I am a realist as well. These girls are from Taiwan.” He chuckled. “They’re blind, Linnear-san, could you tell that? The prevailing explanation is that their affliction allows them a more sensitive sense of touch. I am inclined to agree. Ever since my first trip to Taiwan in ’56, I have dreamed of bringing Taiwan masseuses here to Japan. What do you think, Linnear-san?”

“Superb,” Nicholas grunted. The girl was turning his rocklike muscles to butter beneath her talented fingers and palms. He breathed deeply into the expansion, experiencing an almost dizzying sense of exhilaration.

“I was obliged to remain in Taiwan for ten days while we jury-rigged a deal that was falling through. I assure both you gentlemen that the only worthwhile features of that country are its cuisine and its extraordinary blind masseuses.”

For a time then there was only the soft somnolent slap of flesh against flesh, the sharp camphor smell of the liniment that somehow increased the overall sense of drowsiness.

Nicholas’ mind returned to the mysterious fourth man. He was well acquainted with the convoluted byways of Japanese business structure, so different and alien to Westerners. He knew that despite the fact Sato was this
keiretsu
’s—enterprise group’s—president, still there were many layers, many men in power, and there were those in the highest reaches of power in Japan who the outsider and even most Japanese never saw or knew about. Was this one of those men? If so, Nicholas had to believe Tomkin’s admonition of extreme care on the long trip across the Pacific. “This deal with Sato Petrochemicals is potentially the biggest I’ve ever put together, Nick,” he had said. “The merging of my Sphynx Silicon division and Sato’s Nippon Memory Chip
kobun
is going to bring untold profits over the next twenty years to Tomkin Industries.

“You know American manufacturers; they’re so goddamned slow on the uptake. That’s why I decided to start up Sphynx two and a half years ago. I got fed up with relying on these bastards. I was always three to six months behind schedule because of them and by the time I got their shipment, the Japs had already come out with something better.

“Like everything else, they’ve been taking our basic designs and making the product better and at a far lower price. They did it to the Germans with thirty-five-millimeter cameras, they did it to us and the Europeans with cars. Now they’re gonna do it to us again with computer chips unless we get off our asses.

“You better than anyone, Nick, know how goddamned hard it is for a foreign company to get a toehold in Japan. But now I’ve got something they want—want badly enough to allow me fifty-one percent interest in my own company. That’s unheard of over there. I mean, they took IBM to the cleaners when they opened up in Tokyo.”

Nicholas recalled the incident well. Japan’s all-powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry, known more colloquially as MITI, had sprung up after World War II to essentially help guide Japan’s economy back onto sound footing. In the 1950s, MITIs chief minister, Shigera Sahashi, became the
samurai
bent on discouraging what he saw as a massive invasion of American capital into Japan.

He also saw the enormous potential worldwide market coming for computers. Japan had no computer technology whatsoever at the time. Sahashi used IBM’s desire to open up Japan for its trade to effectively create a national computer industry.

MITI already had set policies severely limiting the involvement of foreign companies in Japan’s economy. The ministry was so powerful that, in effect, it could exclude all foreign participation without its consent.

Sahashi allowed the formation of IBM-Japan but as soon as the fledgling company was set up, he set about showing them what they had stepped into. IBM, of course, held all the basic patents that Japan required to begin its own homegrown industry.

In a now historic meeting with IBM-Japan, Sahashi told them: “We will take every measure possible to obstruct the success of your business unless you license IBM patents to Japanese firms and charge them no more than a five-percent royalty.”

When the understandably appalled IBM officers indignantly accused the Japanese, through him, of having an inflated inferiority complex, Sahashi said, “We do not have an inferiority complex toward you; we only need time and money to compete effectively.”

Stunned, the Americans were faced with the difficult choice of having to withdraw IBM completely from a major part of its planned worldwide expansion or capitulating to MITI’s total domination.

They chose to submit, and for years afterward Sahashi would proudly recount the details of his triumphant negotiations.

“I learned from that fiasco.” Tomkin’s voice had brought Nicholas back. “I’m not so greedy that I’ll put one foot in the trap before I know what the hell’s going on. I’m going to use the Japs, not the other way around.

“I won’t spend dollar one on a Japanese company until the deal’s set. I’ve got the patented advance, but there’s no way I can manufacture this new-type chip in America without the costs making sales prohibitive. Sato can give me that; he controls Japan’s sixth largest
konzern.
He can manufacture this thing cheaply enough to make this venture profitable in a big way.”

He laughed. “And I do mean big, Nick. Believe it or not, we’re looking at a net profit of a hundred million dollars within two years.” His eyes were on fire. “You heard me right. One hundred million!”

Nicholas might have been sleeping when the hands lifted from his muscles. He felt better than he had in years. He heard muffled movement in the room and then Sato’s commanding voice. “Now we shower and dress for business. In fifteen minutes Miss Yoshida will fetch you.” He stood up, a thick, black shadow. Nicholas twisted his head to try to get a good look at him, but all he could discern was that Sato was not tall by American standards. Behind him, the specter of the fourth man stirred and got to his feet. Nicholas shifted his gaze, but Sato’s bulk was between him and the mysterious stranger.

“Very little business,” the Japanese industrialist was saying now. “Of course you must still be fatigued by your journey and it is, after all, late in the day. But still”—he bowed formally to them both—“it is Monday and the preliminaries cannot wait. Do you agree, Tomkin-san.”

“Let’s get on with it, by all means.” Even though he was closer to Nicholas, Tomkin’s voice sounded odd and muffled.

“Excellent,” Sato said shortly. His bullet head nodded. “Until then.”

When they were alone, Nicholas sat up, the towel draped across his loins. “You’ve been very quiet,” he said into the gloom.

In the brief pause, the girls shuffled away, rustling like reeds in the wind.

Tomkin slid off the table. “Just getting a feel for the territory.” He wrapped himself in his large towel. “Sato seemed busy talking to you; I let him. What’s it to me, right? I was thinking about who was with him.”

“Any ideas?” Nicholas said as they walked through into the shower room.

Tomkin shook his head. “You know Jap industry. God alone knows how they run things here and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that even He gets confused once in a while.” Tomkin shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Whoever he was, he’s a big one, to be allowed into Sato’s inner sanctum like that.”

Seiichi Sato’s office was almost entirely Western in aspect—comfortable sofas and chairs grouped around a low black lacquer coffee table with the ubiquitous Sato logo etched into its center, and, farther away toward the sheets of window looking out on Tokyo, a large rosewood and brass desk, low cabinets, all atop deep pile champagne colored carpet. Woodblock prints were on the walls, all, Nicholas saw, from twentieth-century artists.

Yet as he accompanied Tomkin across the expanse of carpet Nicholas noticed a half-open door beyond which he saw a
tokonoma
—a traditional niche into which was placed fresh flowers every day in a small, simple arrangement. Above it on the wall was an old scroll with some of its original gilt powder still on it. Nicholas could not read the inscription as the angle was too acute but he knew it would be a Zen saying, written by an ancient master.

Seiichi Sato came around from behind his desk in quick, confident strides. He was, as Nicholas had gathered, a rather short man though not overly so. Through his Ralph Lauren suit Nicholas could make out the great bulge of muscles across his shoulders and upper arms like a mantle of iron and he thought, The man works out religiously. He searched Sato’s face, pockmarked and rather angular, with slab cheeks that rose high into his eye sockets and a wide, sleek forehead topped by coarse, brushcut hair. There was nothing subtle about the man’s physiognomy. Nor was he a particularly handsome individual, but what his face lacked in beauty and subtlety it more than made up for by the sheer force of its inner drive and strength of will. His spirit was enormously powerful.

Smiling, Sato held his hand out to each of them in a very American form of greeting. Behind his great looming shoulder Nicholas was amazed to see the summit of Fuji-yama. He knew on clearer days it was visible from the top of the new International Trade Center building at Hamamatsu-chō Station, where the monorail leaves for Haneda. But here in the heart of Shinjuku: fantastic!

“Come,” Sato said, gesturing, “the sofa offers more comfort for the weary traveler.”

When they were seated, Sato made a small noise in the back of his throat, no more than if he were clearing the passage, but immediately a figure appeared through the half-open door to the
tokonoma.

The man was fairly tall and rail thin. He had about him the air of the sea, changeless and formidable. He could have been ten years older than Sato, in his sixties, but that was difficult to judge. His hair was graying and wispy, almost frondlike. He wore a neat, immaculately clipped mustache that was yellowed by smoke tar along its lower rim.

He came across to them in jerky, almost somnambulent strides as if he did not quite have total control of all his muscles. As he came close, Nicholas saw that something had been done to his right eye for the lid was permanently locked in a semiopen position and the gleaming orb within, though his own and not a piece of glass, was clouded and milky like a damaged agate.

“Allow me to introduce Mr. Tanzan Nangi.” The one-eyed man bowed formally, and Nicholas returned it. He was dressed in a charcoal gray suit with a faint pinstripe, brilliantly white shirt, and a plain gray tie. Nicholas recognized him immediately as one of the old school: conservative and wary of any foreign businessman, perhaps not unlike Sahashi of MITI.

“Nangi-san is chairman of the Daimyō Development Bank.”

That was all Sato had to say. Both Nicholas and Tomkin knew that almost all multimanufacturing
keiretsu
in Japan were ultimately owned by one bank or another because that was where all the money resided; it was quite logical. The Daimyō Development Bank owned Sato Petrochemical.

Miss Yoshida brought in a tray laden with a steaming porcelain pot and four delicate cups. Carefully, she knelt beside one end of the coffee table and, using a reed whisk, slowly prepared the green tea.

Nicholas watched her, noting the competence, the strength held tightly in check, the grace of the fingers as they handled the implements. When all of the men had been served, she rose and silently left. At no time had she looked directly at anyone.

Nicholas felt Nangi’s hard stare and knew he was being sized up. He had no doubt that the bureaucrat knew all about him; he would never come to a meeting such as this without being properly briefed. And Nicholas also knew that if he was indeed as conservative as he appeared outwardly he would hold no love for one such as Nicholas Linnear: half-Oriental, half-English. In Nangi’s eyes, he would be below the status of
gaijin.

Together, as was traditional, they lifted their small cups, brought the pale green froth to their lips, drank contentedly. With amusement, Nicholas saw Tomkin wince slightly at the intensely bitter taste.

“Now,” Tomkin said, abruptly setting his cup down and hunching forward as if he were a football lineman ready to leap across the line of scrimmage at the sound of the snap, “let’s get down to business.”

Nangi, who held his upper torso as stiffly as he used his legs, carefully extracted a filigreed platinum case from his inside breast pocket and, opening it, extracted a cigarette with a pair of thin, pincerlike fingers. Just as carefully, he clicked a matching lighter and inhaled deeply. Smoke hissed from his wide nostrils as he turned his head.

“‘Softlee, softlee, catchee monkey.’” He said the words as if they had the bitterest taste on his tongue. “Isn’t that how the British often put it out here in the Far East, Mr. Linnear?”

Inwardly appalled, Nicholas nevertheless held his anger in check. There was nothing but the hint of a benign smile on his lips as he said, “I believe some of the old Colonials may have used that phrase borrowed from the Chinese.”

“Corrupted,” Nangi corrected.

Nicholas nodded his acquiescence; it was quite true. “That was a long time ago, Nangi-san,” he continued. “Times have changed and brought with them modern, more enlightened values.”

“Indeed.” Nangi purred away, apparently annoyed that he had no ready rejoinder to that.

Sato stepped in to guide the conversation away from the friction. “Mr. Tomkin, you and Mr. Linnear are only just arrived here. Mr. Greydon, your legal counsel, is not due until 11:15 tomorrow morning. Shall we then limit ourselves to agreeing to the outlines of the merger. There is time enough for details. I—”