The Samurai Strategy Part 57

"Tam, I'd like very much to see it too. Think you could arrange something with Noda-san?"

"I can try."

"You know, not many people outside the Imperial Household have actually viewed it really up close. I hear it's almost perfectly preserved."

"Then this could be your chance." She reached and took his hand. After all, the weather was cold. "I'll ring Noda in the morning."

"Thanks. But no matter what happens, with that or anything else, just seeing you again will make this trip worthwhile." He gave her hand a squeeze.

"All right, Ken, dammit you win." She turned and slipped her arms around his neck, then drew his lips down to hers. The snow drifted onto her eyelids. "You're right. I don't have any answers, to anything."

Again she felt almost as though time was running in reverse. The smoothness of his skin, the ease of his touch, the firm muscles.

"It'll be over soon, Tam. It has to be. And then we'll all look back on this like a bad dream." He encircled her in his arms. "We'll go off to Hokkaido if you like it so much there. Together. Just you and me."

"Why is it all the men I know keep offering me trips?" She laughed and brushed the snow out of his hair. "Matt keeps trying to get me to go down to the Caribbean. Now you want to take me to Hokkaido. I sound like everybody's getaway girl."

"n.o.body's called you a girl. You're a woman. You decide what you want."

"Well, at the moment I just want to go to bed with you." She pulled his lips down. "After that I'll worry about the next move."

"We just have to trust each other. That's all that matters."

Well, she thought, how could she not trust this man?

At least for tonight. Tomorrow she would think about tomorrow.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Kenji Asano was a very complex human being--Western on the surface, but with his own personality always glimmering through at the unexpected moment. He seemed to capture the best of both worlds: the forthrightness of an American and the intuitive self-confidence I've come to think of as a hallmark of the East.

The j.a.panese are a subtle people, in the finest sense of the word, and I normally feel slightly oafish in their land. I always know I'm missing about three levels of the nuance in whatever's going on. By the same token, a j.a.panese venturing into the West frequently seems to be moving as though he were following the numbers on one of those old Arthur Murray dance diagrams. The steps are precise and correct, but there's no glide to it, no natural rhythm. Ken, I must say, had long since gotten past that kind of awkwardness. His motions were fluid, his reactions quick and natural. Also, he managed to achieve this while retaining qualities that always reminded you he came from a culture that was writing Kyoto romances and wearing perfumed silk when London and Paris still had pigs in their garbage-strewn streets.

"Ken, you're a phenomenon." We were climbing into his blue Toyota sports car, which he'd driven up from Tokyo. Low profile--the car and the trip. "This play could blow up in your face."

Over our leisurely three-way breakfast in the hotel bar, he had given me a reasonably detailed sketch of the situation, after which Tam headed off in the DNI limo for her second day of appointments in the robot labs. My honest reaction, despite the p.r.i.c.kle of jealousy, was instant liking of Asano. Furthermore, in the absence of anything better, his scheme seemed worth a shot.

Now came the sword. A phone call established that Noda had no objection to Ken's seeing it too, so we were set to head over to the Metallurgy Lab together. Not a bad time for straight talk.

"I know it's a gamble, Matthew, but I'd like to think of it as repaying my debt to America." He inserted his key in the ignition and started the engine. "In a way I feel some personal responsibility for the current condition of your technology."

Was he about to come clean on the subject of MITI's semiconductor blitz?

"You know, I once heard you were the brains behind j.a.pan's memory chip takeover."

"Our strategy seemed prudent at the time." He sighed, then turned around to begin backing out of the hotel parking lot. "If you're planning for the long term, the sectors you focus on are obvious." He paused to light a Peace, then crumpled the wooden match in his hand and exhaled as he s.h.i.+fted into drive.

"And you play hardball."

"Otherwise why bother? I guess we had no idea the U.S. could be so inept. We a.s.sumed your semiconductor people, like your baseball teams, were major league."

He was right about that part. America fumbled away its lead by chasing quick profits. While MITI was playing the only way it knew how. Long term.

"I can't tell you how much I regret what's happened since," he continued, glancing occasionally at the rows of research labs gliding by on both sides of the roadway. "I now realize that a more cooperative approach would have worked to everyone's

benefit. In the long run we each need the other. Now, it's going to take plenty of cooperation to prevent the U.S. from becoming a back office for Matsuo Noda."

"You really think a big MITI move will blow the whistle?"

"Matthew, the ministry is the closest thing j.a.pan has to a strategic deterrent. By exploiting it, I will become the j.a.panese Rosenberg in the eyes of many, but if I can cause a worldwide scandal, perhaps everyone here and in the U.S. will start thinking about the implications of Noda's takeover."

"Friend, you're throwing your career in front of a train." I said it with respect. "Matsuo Noda could eat us both for _hors d'oeuvres_."

"Us, maybe. But not MITI. At least not yet." He smiled. "You know, we j.a.panese have a tradition of committing ritual suicide, _seppuku_, to emphasize a principle. You might say I'm doing that, but it's only professional _seppuku_. No unseemly knives or blood on the tatami."

"I understand now why Tam feels about you the way she does."

"Matthew." He spoke quietly. "I am here, you are there. I think she needs someone she trusts, and you seem to be that person just now. Stay by her."

"I'd like nothing better." And with that we lapsed into pensive silence.

It took only about ten minutes for the drive over to the laboratory, another structure that could have been a hangar for flying saucers.

Somehow the idea of viewing a sacred relic of j.a.pan's imperial past in this sci-fi setting was incongruous in the extreme, pure George Lucas.

We alighted in the executive parking lot and headed up the sidewalk together. At the sealed entrance Ken showed his palm to the computer's eye, a synthetic voice cleared us, and in we went. Waiting on the other side was a senior staff man who greeted us at the first security check, bowed, and motioned us to follow.

One area of the lab had been cordoned off, top security, with gun- carrying guards posted about every ten feet. There were also about two dozen plainclothes types wearing a white armband emblazoned with the Imperial insignia. Seemed that n.o.body, but n.o.body, got close to the Sun G.o.ddess's sidearm without clearance from the top.

The staff man said Noda was currently tied up in a meeting

with the director, so we should wait. No need, I said, flas.h.i.+ng my DNI meis.h.i.+. He bowed and we were waved past the guards, then ushered directly into the top-security workroom--where the team of white-frocked technicians was said to be cleaning and retouching the gilding on the sword's _tsuba _hand guard, the decorative little disc that separates the hilt from the blade.

Since the _tsuba_ on swords were interchangeable, not necessarily connected in any particular way to a given piece, they're actually a separate art form, interesting but not overly serious items. Fact is, the Imperial Household could just as well have sent this one up here for work and kept the sword in Tokyo.

Such, however, was not the case. The main attraction itself was undoubtedly over there on the back workbench, in a big stainless steel box half the size of a coffin, an armed guard stationed next to it.

Noda must have told everybody we were coming in today because the technicians parted like the Red Sea at our approach. Although the president of Dai Nippon was still nowhere to be seen, the _tsuba_ was there all right, lying exposed on a worktable right next to a pile of cleaning pads and the gilding apparatus.

And it was a stunner, take my word. One of the most tasteful I've ever had the pleasure to view. Iron, of course, and about ten centimeters across, circular. Actually it was shaped like a chrysanthemum, with the raised image of a mirror on one side and a beaded necklace on the other. The exquisite metalwork was enhanced by the fresh gilding, which made the embossing even more striking. My unprofessional opinion? Very, very ancient. Older than twelfth century? Entirely possible. I really couldn't say. But a wild guess would be early Heian, certainly no later than Kamakura. Fact is, back in those days metalwork didn't change all that much for long periods of time, so there's no real way to date with precision.

"_Hijo-ni omos.h.i.+roi desu_"--very interesting--I said after a respectful interval, hoping to get into the spirit of the occasion and impress everybody with my Berlitz j.a.panese. "And now, would it be possible to see the actual sword?" I pointed toward the stainless steel coffin.

"Sealed in there, I presume."

The head technician bowed and suddenly looked very troubled. Then he mumbled something in rapid j.a.panese to Asano. He didn't budge.