The Samurai Strategy Part 73

I looked up as Noda fingered his Uzi. "Just come on over now. Don't putz around with the market. We could use the company. And Bill . . ."

"Yeah?"

"This shindig's BYOB. So how about picking up a fifth of Scotch? That way we can all get into the spirit of things here on the eleventh floor."

"Walton, that's a h.e.l.l of a--"

"I know bringing your own booze is not your style. But why don't you check in with Eddie, the security chief downstairs? He always keeps me a bottle of Suntory there in the utility room. See him about it."

"That j.a.panese c.r.a.p. Matt, what are you talking about? You know I hate-- "

"Just ask for Eddie, Bill." I cut him off. "Tell him Matthew Walton wants his black label j.a.panese juice sent up here immediately.

Understand?"

I hung up before Henderson could say anything more.

Such as tell me we both knew there was no such thing as "black label"

Suntory.

"Guess he'll be here shortly." I turned back to Noda.

"He should be here in no time at all, Mr. Walton. Two of my guards have been posted outside his building since he returned there yesterday. For his own safety. They will bring him."

With that chilling bit of news Matsuo Noda proceeded to yank out the phone cord, then head back to his office. The Art of War. You leave nothing to chance. In fact his two sumo heavies were now standing outside my office, keeping a close eye on us. Guess he no longer had full confidence in Jim Bob.

"Tam, did you catch what just happened?" I'd walked back over to the terminals.

"I did." She was staring into s.p.a.ce.

"Henderson was our best hope to get out of here alive. He has a suspicious mind the equal of Sherlock Holmes's. But now..."

"Matt, what's he going to do to us all?"

"Don't think it'll be pretty."

"Then . . ." She'd turned and was staring at the security entrance, wearing a quizzical expression.

I wheeled around to look too, and at first I thought I might have been hallucinating. A female figure was emerging through the doors, wearing an outfit whose style I couldn't quite place. Maybe it was one of those bulky creations such as Yohji Yamamoto or some other avant-garde j.a.panese designer might dream up, but it didn't resemble anything I'd ever seen before. Silk like a kimono, yet with a flowing quality.

Ancient almost.

Then I had a vision, just offbeat enough to fit. An ink ill.u.s.tration out of the The Tale of Genji flashed before my eyes, and I realized I was seeing a _hakama_, something that hadn't been around the streets of j.a.pan for roughly eight hundred years.

The woman in it was wearing peculiar makeup, not punk, though it might have been. It was pale, like the delicate ink shadings on a Heian hand scroll. She looked for all the world like a court lady of ages past; she'd have fit right in at some 1185 Heian linked-verse soiree. Old Kyoto come to life.

Is this the latest neo-New Wave? What in good Christ . . .

The only uncoordinated touch was the handbag, leather and starkly modern, with a lock attached.

Jim Bob gave her a glazed stare as she moved right past him, headed for us. The sumo pair was bowing to the floor.

Well, well, the Emperor's most devoted courtier had finally arrived.

Into our presence on this day of days had returned none other than Ms.

Akira Mori. One look at her eyes told me she'd come to kill somebody.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

"Mr. Walton, where is the silver case?" She'd walked straight up to us and now was just standing there, awaiting an answer.

"Mori-san, that silver box is long gone, thanks to Noda." I suddenly felt as if we'd just dropped out of the twentieth century and back into the twelfth. Time warp. "Let me tell you something. It was like the apple in the Garden of Eden: bite into it and out would spew the knowledge of good and evil. Better to forget the whole thing."

"You don't know anything."

"Definite point. We've just discovered there was a heck of a lot we didn't know." I thumbed toward Noda's office. "Including the scope of Dai Nippon's impressive new investment program."

She ignored that response entirely as she whirled on Tam, her voice increasingly strident. "Dr. Richardson, you have betrayed His Majesty."

"Mori-san, you and everybody who's helping Noda are the ones who've done the betraying." Tam stared her in the eye, daggers.

"Even though you are Fujiwara, you still let him continue," Mori pressed on, oblivious. "His scheme to manipulate the Emperor, to undermine MITI--"

"That's got nothing to do with--"

"It is the duty of a Fujiwara to protect His Majesty."

"Speaking of His Majesty," I cut in, "how much did you have to do with Noda's fake sword? Guess that 'protected' the Emperor too. Nothing like being handed a new lease on divinity."

"The sword was to be his gift to me." She said it hesitantly. "To restore--"

"Perhaps we can clarify what it's really intended to restore, Mori- san," I interrupted again. 'The shogunate, with Noda as--"

She turned on me. "And you helped him too."

"What?"

"You and Asano-san stole the only thing I could have used to stop him.

The contents of that silver case. And then this operation. After I'd tried to warn you both."

"Mori-san, could be we're all acting under certain misunderstandings here today. For starters, buying up every American blue chip issue in sight was not exactly our idea."

She stared at me for a second, disbelieving. "But that is precisely what you are doing."

"Think again." I pointed toward Noda's office. "That's his game. Helped along by that sharpshooter over at the console." I waved to Jim Bob, who toasted us with his champagne gla.s.s, still too zonked on uppers to comprehend the revised ground rules. "Maybe you'd like to run through it with them."

She seemed to notice him for the first time. "Who is that person?"