The Samurai Strategy Part 63

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Guess Tam's Shinto _kami _were on our side, since we made it through Narita Airport with no ha.s.sles; or maybe being dead keeps you off anybody's. .h.i.t list. Now that MlTI was determined not to release our names until they located our remains, we looked to be in limbo as far as Matsuo Noda and Dai Nippon were concerned. Given the fact the chopper had been demolished and then burned down to metal, n.o.body knew anything. Yet.

The scenario Tam laid out on the 747 flying back, while we drank a lot of airline cognac in the upstairs lounge, was destined to be yet another first in the annals of American finance, one way or the other.

If we bungled it--and lived to face the consequences--would we end up like those grim-faced executives you see being hustled into the federal courthouse downtown, flanked by G-men in cheap trench coats? Later, eyeing the network cameras, we'd have to smile bravely and declare that American justice, in which we had full confidence, would surely vindicate us after all the facts, etc.

To go with her play meant we were headed either for the history books or jail, or both. But we would definitely need

Henderson and his "Georgia Mafia." My questions were actually pretty simple: (1) Could it be done, and if so, (2) how and how fast?

We got back Monday, the day before New Year's, and the first person I called after Amy was Henderson, casually mentioning that something potentially very disrupting to the Street was in the works.

"Bill, fasten your seat belt. b.u.mpy weather ahead."

That captured his attention in a flash. What in h.e.l.l, he inquired, was I talking about?

"We need to get together, tonight." I continued.

"Where?"

"How about your place? Matter of fact, there's a real question just now, at least in j.a.pan, concerning whether Tam and I are actually alive."

"Walton, what in G.o.d's name is going on?"

"In the fullness of time, friend, all things will be known. Now we see as through a gla.s.s darkly . . . well, actually we're seeing through the smudgy windows of the Plaza, suite three twenty-five, where we're presently holed up. But we've got to stay low profile for a few more days."

"Whatever you say," he replied, still puzzled. "Then how about dropping by here tonight for a quick one, and then afterward we can all mosey over to Mortimer's on Lex for a quick bite?"

"Okay. As long as we go late. I want to miss the happy-hour crowd."

This did not please him, but he agreed. My suspicions were he wanted to use the occasion to reconnoiter the glittery, jet-set ladies at the bar. Henderson, whose style and drawl undoubtedly distinguished him from the B-school compet.i.tion there like a white-maned palomino in a herd of draft horses (investment drones who wore a beeper on their belt and used "bottom-line" as a verb), surely found the place a fertile hunting ground. Mortimer's was custom-made for his idiosyncratic style.

About nine that evening Tam and I slipped out of the Plaza's Fifty- ninth Street entrance and headed up Fifth Avenue toward Bill's. He was headquartered in one of those solid, granite-faced buildings near the Metropolitan that are constructed like small fortresses--presumably so New York's upper one tenth of one percent can repel the long-feared a.s.sault of the homeless hordes at their feet. In the lobby, Henderson vouched for us over the TV intercom, after which we were given a visual search by the doorman, his uniform a hybrid of Gilbert & Sullivan and crypto-n.a.z.i, and shown the elevator.

A quick doorbell punch and the man from Georgia greeted us, Scotch in hand. His little pied-a-terre was about three thousand square feet of knee-deep carpets, Old Masters (I loved the Cezanne and the Braque), and masculine leather furniture. A padded wet bar, complete with mirror and a bank of computer monitors--for convenient stock action--stretched across one side of the living room, while the sliding gla.s.s doors opposite faced onto a balcony that seemed suspended in midair over Central Park. While Tam, with her designer's eye, was complimenting him politely on the understated elegance of his Italian wallpaper, French art, and English furniture, I tried not to remember all those early years back in New Haven when his idea of decor was a feed-store calendar featuring a bluetick hound.

Although the balcony doors were open, the living room still had the acrid ambience of a three-day-old ashtray. He poured us a drink from a half-gallon of Glenfiddich on the bar, gestured us toward the couch, and offered Havana cigars from a humidifier. I took him up on it, out of olfactory self-defense.

"So tell me, ladies and gents, what's the latest?" He settled himself in the leather armchair and plopped his boots onto an antique ottoman.

"How're the j.a.p a.s.sault forces doing these days? They gonna take over the Pentagon next?"

"Not that we've heard." I was twisting my Havana against the match.

"Though it might reduce procurement costs on toilet seats and ashtrays if they did."

Henderson sipped at his drink, then his tone heavied up. "Who are we kidding, friends. My considered reading of the situation is your boys on Third Avenue are unstoppable. They can do whatever they d.a.m.n well please from here on out."

"That's not necessarily in everybody's best interest, Bill." I strolled over to look down at the park. "Got any new thoughts?"

"Can't say as I do. Our IBM play didn't get to first base; Noda saw us coming a mile away. Thank G.o.d I didn't get in deep enough to get hurt."

He leaned back. "What makes it so d.a.m.ned frustrating is the market's tickled as a pig in s.h.i.t. Ain't n.o.body too interested in dissuading your friends from buying up everything in sight. Street's never seen anything like this kind of bucks before. It's a whole new ball game downtown."

"That's right, Bill," I mused aloud. "The question is, whose ball game is it?" Tam still hadn't said anything.

"d.a.m.ned good question. What happens when foreigners start owning your tangible a.s.sets? The answer, friend, is they end up owning _you_."

"Henderson, all that could be about to change."

"Says who?" He leaned back. "Looks to me like Noda's going all the way."

"Bill, let's talk one of those hypothetical scenarios you like so much.

What if Dai Nippon suddenly had a change of plans? Switched totally?

And instead of buying, they started selling?"

That pulled him up short. He even set down his gla.s.s. "Come again?"

"Call it a hypothetical proposition. I'm asking what would happen on the Street if Dai Nippon decided, unannounced, to make a significant alteration in its portfolio? All of a sudden started divesting?

Ma.s.sively."

"When'd this happen!" He squinted. "How much action we looking at?"

I didn't want to say it for fear he might need CPR for his heart.

Finally Tam set down her drink and answered him. "All of it."

"Christ." He went pale. "What's that add up to, total?"

"We figure it'd run to several hundred billion," I answered.

He sat there in confusion. "Over what kind of time period?"

"That's part of the reason we wanted to see you. If, strictly as a hypothesis, they were to do something like that, as fast as possible, how long would it take? Just throw your hat at the number, wild guess."

"Time, you mean?"

"Exactly."

"Well, let's look at it a second here. I'd guesstimate that all the exchanges together--Big Board, American, Merc, CBOT, NASDAQ, Pacific, the rest--probably have a dollar volume upwards of . . . how many billions a day? Say twenty billion, easy, maybe more, the way volume's climbing. But that figure's purely hypothetical. If Dai Nippon dumped all those securities on the table at once, the value of their portfolio would go to h.e.l.l."

I glanced at Tam.

"That's how we see it too," she said. And nothing more.

"What are you two suggesting?" He was visibly rattled. "Noda'd never pull anything that crazy."

"Bill, with all due respect, let's proceed one step at a time here with this hypothesis," I went on. "a.s.suming, just for purposes of discussion, he did decide to do something like that, unload everything, what's the fastest way?"