Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
“Did you give Mary Kate back her job?” She felt the pumping of her heart like a weight of granite hanging inside her.
“It wasn’t her job to give back, Justine.” He was closer to her than she wanted him to be. “I told you I had found the better person to fill it.”
She whirled on him, her eyes blazing. “You used me, you bastard!”
He remained calm. “You know, the trouble with you is that you’re a scared child in a woman’s body. Come off it, Justine. I didn’t use you any more than I’d use anyone else. It’s the wrong term. Mary Kate wasn’t working out. In the adult business world you don’t fire an executive—at any level—until you’ve hired his or her replacement. I’d be remiss in my duty to the company if I’d gone about it in any other way.”
“But we’re friends.”
“That’s incidental. But if it means anything to you, I’m sorry that had to enter into it.” He smiled, testing the waters. “There was nothing sinister in it, I assure you. I’d seen some of your free-lance work, I spoke to several of my executives who’d used you over the past year. They all thought you were great.” He smiled again. “All of them warned me about your temper, by the way.”
“I see that didn’t deter you.” She wished now that she hadn’t been crying when he came up.
“I liked your work too much. You’ve got a singular mind when it comes to advertising concepts. That’s an invaluable quality.” He looked away for a moment and his expression gave him the appearance of a little boy. “Anyway, I thought I could tame you. I saw it as a challenge.” His eyes swung back. “I’d give anything if we could start over from the beginning.”
“Is that why you followed me?”
He shook his head, standing his ground as a large wave made it through the coral reef out at the headland to the crescent bay, began to surge toward them. “Not really. I found that the office seemed very empty without you.”
When the wave hit, it rose the water up to chin level, knocking them sideways, forcing them together.
Nangi put his ruined legs up on the chaise as he settled back and stared out at the South China Sea as it ran up onto the pale yellow beach at Shek-O. He was on the south side of Hong Kong Island, nearer to Aberdeen than he was to Central District, the “downtown” and financial hub of the Crown Colony.
Shek-O was one of the four or five areas within Hong Kong reserved for the truly wealthy in this teeming city of enormous wealth and abject poverty.
But things had changed in the year and a half since he had been here.
For one, the beautiful old hotel at Repulse Bay had been torn down in order to erect another group of high-rise houses. It was not solely that Nangi had spent many a glorious sun-spangled afternoon at tea, doing business on the expansive Colonial porch of that hotel, that he mourned its passing. It was just as much the thought of the old ways passing, the sunny, serene days transplanted by the lust for profits that the building boom had created during five or six years of me Crown Colony’s high-speed growth in the middle and late seventies.
That was what had ultimately brought him here. The collapse of that real estate boom. And in that light the destruction of the Repulse Bay Hotel was even more bitter.
Now Nangi was alone in the tile and stucco villa watching a young nubile Chinese girl brave the pollution of the South China Sea as she ran down the beach and into the mild surf. No one else was about although a pitcher of iced tea and two tall glasses sat on a pebble glass-topped table at Nangi’s left elbow.
He saw the girl’s bobbing head in the water. She had not bothered to tie up her hair or to wear a cap. The dark tail of hair flung down her naked back, spreading out in the water like a sea anemone, tendrils waving on the tide.
Wu-Shing.
The words kept intruding on his conscious thoughts and that was a problem. Three deaths; three questions to be answered. Nangi wondered what connection there could be between the
Wu-Shing
murders and
Tenchi.
These days, when anything unexplainable occurred he immediately thought of
Tenchi.
That was logical enough. He knew the Russians would stop at nothing to wrest
Tenchi
from Japan…if they knew what
Tenchi
was. As for the Americans, he could imagine them attempting to sabotage the operation. Ever since the end of the war America had been dependent upon Japan to be its anti-Communist watchdog in the East. But America wanted Japan subservient so that, like a willow, it would bend to the will of the victorious country. And it was true that Japan was dependent on America.
But
Tenchi
would change all that. Nangi feared that if the Americans got wind of the operation they would move as quickly as the Soviets to short-circuit it. This could not be allowed.
For the first time in many decades Japan found itself totally alone and, oddly enough, it was a frightening experience. He was becoming increasingly aware that he could no longer cling to his dreams of what Japan had once been. All that was gone now, wiped out by the atomic sunshine and the period of high-speed growth in which he had played such a crucial role.
He closed his eyes, knowing that there were no easy answers in life, nothing was so neat in reality as it was in fiction. One problem at a time, he thought. I must surmount the Chinese obstacle before I again think about ancient and arcane punishments.
Though he had been alone in the villa when he had arrived, he now heard the soft footfalls, opening and closing of doors that foretold the commencement of his assignation.
He reached for the pitcher of iced tea and poured himself a glass. It was bracing and delicious, just the tonic for this already steamy day.
Nangi did not turn his head as his keen ears picked up another’s approach but remained where he was, sipping his drink, staring out at the girl now emerging like a water nymph from the rolling South China Sea.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Nangi.”
By mutual agreement they spoke only English here. It was foreign to both of them but at least they hated it with an equal passion.
“Mr. Liu.” Nangi nodded his head to no one in particular. He heard the creak of the chaise beside him, the musical clink of ice against glass and only then turned his head.
Once this man’s ancestors must have been purebred Manchu, for he had the long, high-domed skull structure peculiar to them. He was tall for an Oriental; he knew it and used this advantage as an intimidating tool even when he was seated.
Liu was smiling now as he sipped at his drink. He put his head back against the chaise. “And how is the business climate in Japan these days, Mr. Nangi?” Liu had the habit of beginning topics as if they had been spoken about previously.
“Very strong,” Nangi said shortly, thinking, I’ll give him nothing to chew on until I’m ready. “The forecast is formidable.”
“Ah,” the Chinese said, moving his head. “Then your, ah,
keiretsu
is not so much involved in the heavy industries that began your country’s great economic leap forward.” He put down his sweating glass, laced his fingers across his small potbelly. “It is my understanding that these industries such as steel manufacturing—long the very core of your economic progress—are in serious financial straits in these days of worldwide recession.”
Nangi said nothing for a moment, wondering just how well this man was informed. He might know the worst of it or again he might be fishing in order to corroborate unconfirmed reports. It was essential that Nangi answer him without giving anything away.
“There is no problem with our steel
kobun
,” he said carefully. “We have seen nothing but profits from it.”
“Indeed.” With that one word Liu made it clear that he did not believe Nangi’s statement. “And what of coal mining? Textile manufacturing? Petrochemicals, hm?”
“This topic is of no interest to me.”
Liu turned his high head like a dog on point. “And yet, Mr. Nangi, it is of interest to me why you would wish to sell a division of your organization that in your words has only made profits for you.”
“We are no longer interested in manufacturing steel.” Perhaps he had said it a shade too quickly. But at least now he knew the extent of the Chinese’s knowledge. It was formidable and he was even more on his guard now.
“The real problem for Japan has, I think, just begun,” Liu said much as an instructor will inform a pupil. “Your golden age of unlimited global economic expansion has come to an end. In years gone by you could export your finished product into foreign markets where they were snapped up immediately over their domestic competition. It gave you not only profits, of course, but an ever-expanding level of employment in your own country.
“But now times have changed.” Liu’s fingers unlaced, spread like a starfish, and closed down again, settling back on his stomach. “Let us take as our example one of your greatest successes: automobiles. Your invasion of the United States’ domestic auto market has caused a spate of unemployment in that country and not long ago forced one of its giant corporations to the brink of financial dissolution.
“You know as well as I do how slow the Americans are to take the initiative.” He smiled thinly. “But sooner or later the deepest sleeper must awake, and when his strength is as vast as is America’s, the awakening can be quite rude. Repeatedly now you have been slapped with import quotas from the U.S. government.
“Now you are beginning to understand what it is like to fence in the international arena. In order to survive you must export capital and technology, building new Nissan plants in Tennessee instead of in Kanda. That means less Japanese employment; less profits. Your era of free trade has ended.”
Despite the truth in what Liu was saying Nangi detected a strong streak of jealousy in the other man’s words. Wouldn’t the Chinese love to be in our economic position, he thought dryly.
“And then there is Yawata,” Liu continued. He was referring to Japan’s magnificent Yawata Steel Works, the oldest and largest of the country’s coastal mills, which began manufacturing in 1901. “Curious, I think. It is an historic relic of other times yet since 1973 your government has shoveled more than three billion dollars into updating and refining Yawata’s technology. And what has it availed them? Today Yawata is in far worse shape than it was after the oil shock of 1973. At least then the government could take economizing measures, streamlining operations, severely rationing fuel consumption. All those steps allowed Yawata’s operations to continue unabated.
“But today those measures are still in effect, and because the worldwide market has shrunk so significantly, Yawata’s work force has dropped from sixty-one thousand in 1969 to less than twenty-four thousand today. Three of Nippon Steel’s blast furnaces are currently idle and a number of their subsidiary plants have closed down.
“The American steel industry would, I think, be delighted to return to the seventy percent capacity Yawata is currently running at. But Japan is simply not geared for such reductions. And what can you do? In America Bethlehem can lay off their workers; in your country your political and social structure does not allow you to fire your employees.”
Liu paused here as if he expected Nangi to make some kind of comment. When he did not, Liu seemed slightly put out and his tone when he spoke again was rather more sharp. “The end result of this little talk,” he said crisply, “is that your
keiretsu
, like most others, is currently going through an organizational upheaval. And that, as we both know, takes capital. With cash flow weakened you have been dipping rather heavily into your reserves.”
“We are quite solid.”
“Solid perhaps.” Liu shrugged. “But I am doubtful that you have enough reserves now to save the All-Asia Bank.”
If he is going to offer me aid from the other side I shall have to strike him across his head with my stick, Nangi thought.
“What do the Communists want with the All-Asia Bank?”
“Oh, we don’t want any part of it,” Liu said conversationally. “Rather, we wish a piece of your
keiretsu.
”
Nangi, despite having extended all his feelers for clues, was thunderstruck.
“Oh, we’re willing to pay a high premium for the privilege,” Liu said into the silence, privately hating the necessity for observing the niceties of conversation among equals just as if he were not face to face with a barbarian. “An
extremely
high premium. It is clear that the
keiretsu
needs to be underwritten; we will provide the new infusion of capital.”
“I’m not interested,” Nangi said, almost strangling on his hatred for this man and all he stood for.
“Please be kind enough to allow me to complete my offer before hastily setting it aside,” Liu forced his lips into the configuration of a smile. Well, he thought, what can you expect from the Japanese. They do not have our long centuries of breeding; they merely appropriated from our culture that which they required in order to raise themselves up from the level of the slavering beast. But, oh, Buddha, they have not come far!
“Our offer is this,” he said. “You relinquish to us one-third interest in your
keiretsu
and we will deliver to you, divided into six semi-yearly payments, the sum of five hundred million dollars.”
At first Nangi was not at all certain that he had heard correctly. But, staring into that long Manchu face, he had no doubts. Five hundred million dollars! His mind immediately embraced all the things made possible by such an incredible infusion of capital. My God, he thought wildly, we could leap to the top if we are careful and courageous and, yes, just a bit lucky.
This was much more money than he could ever hope to get out of Tomkin Industries should their merger go through. It was more capital than he could hope to get from any other source. He was absolutely certain Liu knew this. Too, only the Chinese could come up with enough ready capital to see the All-Asia through the immediate crisis of the bank run. That above all else must be his primary concern. If the All-Asia went he knew the entire
keiretsu
would soon follow.
Tenchi
had put him in a delicate and severely undercapitalized position. Anthony Chin’s treachery might be the final straw that broke the whole business empire apart. For that Nangi would curse him and all his progeny to the end of his days.