The Samurai Strategy Part 12

How would Ken react to her just showing up? After all, Kyoto was two years ago. He'd claimed to be a widower, but was that merely conference fast talk?

Best thing is just to play it straight, she told herself. Strictly business. Let the rest fall out in time.

As she stepped off the elevator, she was relieved to see that the offices were still open. Well, she thought, my first finding is that Ken Asano runs this place with an iron hand, just the way Yoshida did.

Total dedication. Through floor-to-ceiling gla.s.s doors she could see the receptionist at the desk, now excitedly chatting on the phone. Tam waved, and the smiling woman immediately buzzed her through. Just like that. No different from the last time.

Doesn't look to be any MITI conspiracy here, she thought. What exactly had made Allan so worried?

She bowed and handed over her meishi, her business card.

"_Asano-san, onegai shimasu_."

CHAPTER SIX

"Matt, why don't you just send your action over to the 'bean pit' for chrissake?" The phone line from Chicago crackled. "That's where the c.r.a.pshooters are."

"Jerry, I wouldn't know a soybean if I ate one."

"h.e.l.l, half of those loonies over there buying and selling 'bean contracts wouldn't know one either. Come to think of it, I don't know anybody over on the Merc who's ever even seen a pork belly. Do they really exist?" He was yelling to make himself heard over the din of the floor of the Board of Trade. Futures on commodities were being bought and sold all around him. Just then he paused, followed by a louder yell. "Right, I'll buy five, at the market. Yeah. I'm talkin' one and thirteen bid. What? You've got to be kidding. No way." Pause. I could almost see the blue-jacketed floor traders frantically hand-signaling each other. Then he yelled again. "Christ, Frank, I'm already long forty at sixteen. I'm getting murdered here. You guys are killing me. .

. . All right, all right, I'll pay fourteen for ten. Yeah . . . s.h.i.t.

Hang on, Matt. I gotta write this down on a ticket. . . . Jesus, I should be selling Hondas like my brother-in-law down in Quincy. Sits on his b.u.t.t all day, screws his bookkeeper at lunch, and the man's making a bundle." Pause. "h.e.l.l, Matt, what'd I just say?"

"If I heard right, you just bought ten thirty-year Treasury contracts at one oh one and fourteen thirty-seconds. You just agreed to loan the U.S. government a million dollars, Jerry. Very patriotic. Except you're probably going to turn around and unload the contracts in the next five minutes to somebody else."

"Oh, yeah. Right. I should be so lucky. Christ, where's my pencil? This place is driving me nuts. I think my mind's going. I've gotta shorten up some here before the close. Hang on."

He yelled at a runner to take his buy slip, then came back to the phone. "Matt, you're really shaking this place up, you know. Guys are starting to back away. And the people upstairs are beginning to wonder. You've gotta think about going off- exchange with some of this.

Hit the market-maker banks. We can't keep up with you here. I could try to get the Exchange to waive their position limits, but don't hold your breath."

"No problem, Jerry. My client's got plenty of other accounts. We'll roll the next thousand contracts through a different one."

"Christ, whoever you're working for must have coconuts the size of King Kong. You realize you guys're naked here? You're getting short billions."

"I just handle the orders, Jerry."

"Your numbers scare the p.i.s.s out of me just looking at them." He sighed. "Listen, Matt, take care. Get back to you tomorrow at the opening. Right now I've gotta find some greenhorn to take a few of these puppies off my hands or I'm gonna get blown out. Jesus, how'd I let myself get this long at sixteen? Forty f.u.c.king contracts. And I was sure . . . Hey, gotta run. Think I see some idiot over there signaling a seventeen bid. Kid must be from Mars."

"Good luck."

"Right. Maybe I'll try prayer." He was gone.

I'd known Jerry Brighton since we crossed professional swords once in the late sixties, and I'd never seen the man actually sit down. He gave up law early, and these days he elbowed the mob in the Treasury bond futures pit with the grim determination of a horse addict shoving his way to the two-dollar window. If the bonds were sluggish, he'd roam the floor looking for action. Football, you name it. He'd make up bets.

Rumor has it, one slow day he even set up a wager pool taking odds on which floor trader would be the next to go broke, "tap out" in Exchange parlance. I'd guess Jerry's own number was pretty low. A reliable source once told me Jerry'd averaged a million a year for the past five, even while taking a hit year before last for over two million when a certain famous "inside trader" sandbagged him with a phony merger rumor. Maybe it was worth the ulcers. Thing is, I know for a fact he'd have done it for nothing. A born market maker, right down to his rubber-soled Reeboks.

So when Jerry Brighton started complaining that Matsuo

Noda's action was growing too rich for his blood, I knew we were in the big time. It took a lot to impress a pro like him.

The thing was getting scary, but it was still perfectly legal. Let me summarize roughly what had happened over the three weeks since I had decided to play along with Matsuo Noda. First were the physical arrangements. To accommodate my new calling, I'd enlarged my operating s.p.a.ce--the back room of the brownstone's parlor floor, looking out over the garden-- into a makeshift brokerage office complete with a multi- lined telephone and quote services from S-tron and Telerate. I'd also installed a direct tie-line to the T-bill pit of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, ditto the Note and Bond action at the Chicago Board of Trade.

And because of all the computer hardware, I had to move Emma's desk out into the parlor. Consequently she could no longer listen in on my calls, which she did not take kindly. However, I was no longer forced to listen in on hers. I figure that sort of made us even.

In addition, I'd set up accounts at every futures brokerage house in the land, both coasts, to spread out the orders. We were moving a lot of contracts, and the big-time outfits like Salomon Brothers were scrambling to make a market for us. Once again, therefore, nagging questions began to arise. Anybody who'd thought about it for more than a minute would have realized you can't make a play like Noda's without being noticed. There's no bigger rumor mill than the financial arena.

The very idea of shorting the bond market to the tune of billions and remaining obscure and anonymous for any length of time was absurd.

After all, there're two sides to every bet. But since I was supposed to be fronting his move specifically to throw sand in everybody's eyes, all this attention presented something of a quandary. Although we were trying to keep the lid on, buying small batches of Treasuries even as we were shorting them, the price was softening and margin calls were starting to loom on the horizon. None of this made any sense. Noda wasn't hedging or even speculating in the normal sense; he was playing a giant game of cat and mouse with the markets. This told me once again he wasn't showing all the cards in his hand. He had something major, and unexpected, in the pipeline.

Which brought forth the next insight: Matsuo Noda didn't hire me merely because he wanted some innocent-seeming outsider to do his bidding in the futures market; any number of players in this town could have handled that action as well or better. No, he'd sucked me into his operation for some entirely different purpose, at the moment known only to him.

But what? More to the point, why?

Welcome to Friday, and my rather disturbed life. Want to know what really disturbed me the most? Seeing my new employer on CNN's Prime News, standing there right next to the Emperor of j.a.pan. Seemed as though I wasn't the only one now under Noda's spell. All of a sudden my mild-mannered client had become a world-cla.s.s j.a.panese mover and shaker. And that made me very nervous.

Needing a little perspective, I decided to invite down Dr. William J.

Henderson, respected thinker and booze hound. As it happened, he had a little time to kill that Friday before his "late date" with some advertising exec who was flying in from an a.s.signment on the coast.

Since three weeks had gone by since our talk up at Martell's, it seemed like a good occasion to get together and compare notes.

True to his word, he had formally resigned from the President's Council of Economic Advisers, though he'd reluctantly agreed to serve as a forecasting consultant for Wharton Econometrics. He'd also caused some unsettling rumors in the world markets by putting on some very heavy "straddles" in December gold futures and oil. He called it insurance, predicting he'd be covered no matter what happened. Looked at another way, though, Bill Henderson was quietly shifting out of paper money and into commodities. And when Henderson started hedging, you knew the weather forecast was unsettled to stormy.

It turned out he'd also uncovered a few stray elements of what might well be a much bigger game. Nothing solid at that point, but enough to stir him up.

"Know who runs that outfit you've taken on as a client?" He leaned back in one of the leather chairs in the upstairs parlor, new pair of Gucci's glistening, and sampled his third drink. "Guy by the name of Matsuo Noda."

"Henderson, who do you think I was talking to up at Sotheby's the other night?"

"You check your wallet afterward? We're talking heavy guns, my friend."

He snubbed out what must have been his tenth Dunhill in the last hour.

"You didn't tell me he was the honcho behind all this."

"You didn't ask. Know anything about him?"

"Not till last week. I started to do a little checking and first thing I know I'm stumbling across his name everywhere I look." He studied the gla.s.s in his hand. "Tell you something about this Noda. The man drops a quarter, you let him pick it up himself. He'll nail you where the sun don't shine. Definitely a bad news mother."

"You mean that business with the sword?"

"Nah, what in h.e.l.l do I know about swords? That's your toy box. I'm talking about the real world, friend. Turns out Matsuo Noda was the prime mover in one of the biggest takeover plays of the century."

"What takeover? They don't screw around with corporate takeovers in j.a.pan."

"They don't take each other over. They take other businesses over.

Washington may think that war back in the forties is over, but somebody neglected to pa.s.s the word to MITI. Seems they've got the idea it was just the opening skirmish--the only folks who surrendered were the army and navy." Henderson grew ominously serious for a change. "Question is, where's this thing headed? Is the idea of turning our industrial base into a packaging operation for imports some kind of conspiracy, or is it just nature takin' its course?"

Conspiracy? That wasn't a word Henderson threw around lightly. In fact, he tended to scoff at conspiracy theories, claiming they were a subst.i.tute for hardheaded a.n.a.lysis. I agreed. So what was he driving at? I pressed him.

He paused to light a cigarette. "I bring up this unsavory possibility because I'm beginning to detect a little operation code-named 'eat an industry.'"

"Henderson, that's my game. I pitch in to help the little fish fend off the big ones."