The Nicholas Linnear Novels (86 page)

He could no longer hide his erection and he put his hands down between his thighs, trying to cover his embarrassment. That was when he first sensed the danger. She stopped in front of him and, standing straight-backed, thrust her legs out. Jeweled water dripped from the fringe of tight curls onto her firm columns of flesh. Kagami found himself straining forward to see the central vertical ribbon, nature’s most beautiful route.

He gasped and began to choke on his own saliva. Bile came rushing up from his grinding stomach and his mind, stunned, blanked out. All he could do was stare at the inner flesh of her thighs, slack-jawed, while his erection withered on the vine.

Then, stupefaction still dominant on his face, he raised his gaze upward to the woman’s head, saw only a pair of dark enigmatic eyes behind a spread fan of gilt, red and jet.

“Who—” he began, abruptly finding his voice.

But now the fan was moving, coming away, revealing the soft smile on her face. A beautiful face. It made Kagami sigh with its exquisite line and youth. Then, lagging far behind, recognition came, flooding him like a spotlight. And in his mind’s eye the oval, high-cheeked face turned into a painted demon’s mask.

“You—!” The scream bubbled out of his open mouth like a geyser.

The fan struck him edge on, twisting at the very last instant, wielded by a master. It sliced through sweating skin and warm flesh, scraping most painfully along the cheekbone.

Kagami was slow to recoil. The strike was so unexpected, so skillfully administered and with such a razor sharp edge, that he was barely aware of what had taken place.

Kagami’s first thought was to protect his genitals and thus he offered no real resistance. The great gilt fan flicked out again, again, again. He cried out each time he was cut but he steadfastly refused to bring his hands away from between his thighs.

The torso of the woman flowed toward him like smoke borne on the gentle wind of a cloudless summer’s day. Her presence seemed to fill the room, blotting out all light, all air. It was as if she were sucking all life into herself, creating only the ultimate blackness of a vacuum before her.

Kagami shrank before her, cowering and trembling, filaments of pain streaking through him like tracers. He was appalled at how much blood was around him, how hard his heart beat in his ears, how small his penis had become cupped in his protective palms.

Then the fan flickered with a brief whistle. Kagami’s eyes bulged and his mouth opened wide. He felt the fierce bite of steel across his windpipe, the atlas vertebrae of his neck.

His mind screamed hysterically and at last he understood the ultimate goal of this attack. His hands came up, his fingertips trying desperately to fend off the attack. A fan? his mind gibbered. A fan? His head whipped back and forth and he began to climb up the slick tiles of the wall. Anything to get away, to regain life.

His problems with his wife, with Toshiro now seemed laughable to him. How trivial they were compared to the primeval struggle for life. For life! I will not die! his mind screamed at him. Save me!

Wildly he flung out his fists, trying to strike back at his assailant. But he had no training and the lurid image of what he had seen on the insides of her thighs rose within him and he despaired. He knew what she was, though all logic, all tradition cried out to him that it could not be so.

Kagami knew what it was that had a grip on him. He felt in the midst of a nightmare from which he would never awake. Yet still he fought on because hope was all he had now, and for a time it sustained him. He clung to life, he held it to him, he exulted in the knowledge of his existence.

Then the forged steel blades struck once more and what little oxygen was seeping through to him, through his strangling windpipe, ceased. Blood rushed to nowhere, lungs heaved fearfully, then fitfully as carbon dioxide filled them and, through their porous fibers, the whole body.

Kagami’s eyelids fluttered, his eyes began to cross. He saw her fearful visage before him; his ineffectual fingers slid against her sweat-streaked flesh like a child digging into sand. His mind, the last to go, tried to fight on, not comprehending that the body to which it was still attached was already falling into a dreamless, depthless slumber.

With his last ounce of strength, Kagami stared at that face, projecting his bitter hatred as if that were a physical weapon. And in truth it was a rage of such depth that it convulsed already dying muscles. His fingers clenched, grabbing.

But it was a futile gesture for his lower belly was rippling, his eyes rolling up into his head, blinding him, leaving only the unseeing whites to stare blankly up at the steaming tiles, the drifting mist, the rivulets of blood circling one another, mazelike, as they slowly slid down the drain in the center of the otherwise empty room.

Nangi stood up, walking on his stiff, ungainly legs away from the conference table. It was the signal for a break in the proceedings.

While Tomkin rose heavily and left the room, Nicholas strolled to one of the high windows overlooking Shinjuku. Beads of rain swirled downward upon the sea of umbrellas, taking what was left of the delicate cherry blossoms, strewing them along the gutters or park walkways where they were soon ground to fine dust underfoot.

Nicholas stared blankly at the mist-enshrouded city. For the past three and a half hours they had been locked like deadly combatants on the field of battle: Sato, Nangi, Suzuran, their attorney, Masuto Ishii, vice president of operations and Sato’s right-hand man, bolstered by three of Sato’s division heads, Tomkin, Greydon, the Tomkin Industries’ counsel, and himself. Now it was rush hour with hordes of people racing homeward or to dinner rendezvous along the bright-lit Tokyo side streets.

But up here in Sato’s spacious offices there was no movement at all. Inwardly, Nicholas sighed. Sometimes even he found dealing with the Japanese a trying experience Their seeming reluctance to come to any decision, though an obvious negotiating tactic, was often taken to an extreme. Patience was one thing, but Nicholas was often convinced that weeks, even months from now, Sato and Nangi would still be reworking the same points they had all brought up within the first hour and a quarter of this initial agenda.

There had seemed some hope of a break an hour ago when the division heads, Oito, vice president of acquisitions, Kagami, v.p. of finance, and Sosuro, v.p. of research and development, had made their profuse excuses and, with a double round of formal bowing, had taken their leave.

Nicholas had seen the subtle hand sign Sato had given them and had taken heart. His belief then had been that the negotiations were about to reach a level that the Japanese, who were usually more comfortable bolstered by a contingent of executives, thought should be limited strictly to the principals.

But what had followed had been disappointing: yet another one of the seemingly endless discussions batting around the same major areas of difference. One was the monetary split between Sphynx and Nippon Memory. The other was somewhat more bewildering to Nicholas since it was a topic about which he had not been briefed prior to the negotiating session.

This concerned where the Sphynx-Sato manufacturing plant should be built. Apparently Tomkin had done almost eighteen months of cost estimates comparing construction timetables, weather pattern analyses, production and shipping logistics, all of which pointed to building the plant in Misawa, on land owned by the
keiretsu.
The plant’s only neighbor in this small town in the extreme northwest of Honshu, Japan’s main island, was an American Army base.

But, as Sato had pointed out during the opening negotiations, that piece of land had already been designated for use as an expansion site for the
keiretsu
’s Niwa Mining
kobun.

Around and around it had gone, with no side gaining or giving any ground. It was maddening, Nicholas thought now. Ordinarily it wouldn’t matter much. In different times he was confident that they could outlast Sato and Nangi; Nicholas’ own patience would have ensured that.

However, he was recalling the discussion he had had with Tomkin just before they had left the hotel to get into the limo Sato had sent for them.

He had been struck by the paleness of the other man but Tomkin had only dismissed his query disdainfully. “Just a bout with the flu,” he had said. “If you’d been up all night with diarrhea, you wouldn’t look in the pink either, iron man.”

“Just keep calm no matter what happens in there,” Nicholas had advised. “They’ll do everything they can to slow down the pace, to equivocate while subtly needling us.

“They’ll want to get a glimpse inside our guard so they can study our strategy. Also they will need to know just how far they can push us. To go beyond that would lose them great face.” He had shrugged. “It’s strictly S.O.P.”

Tomkin’s haggard face leaned into his so that he could smell the other’s sour breath, rising from his empty roiling intestines. “Then you do something to shake ’em out of their standard operating procedure, Nick. I don’t give a goddamn how you do it, just get it done. I’m not one of those candyasses coming to Japan hat in hand begging for an operating license.”

“Fine. Then all we have to do is wait them out. Do I have to tell you again that patience is everything here? It’s the one quality they cannot conceive of in a foreign devil. Don’t worry. I’ll get you what you want from them.”

But Tomkin’s voice changed and he clung onto Nicholas’ arm like a child. “No, no,” he breathed, “you don’t understand, Nicky. There isn’t any time. This deal’s got to be set by next week the latest.” His brown eyes turned inward. “I…I have commitments I can’t turn my back on…. There’re great sums of money dependent on this merger…Loans that come due…Payments to be made…Above all, payments…Debts to be fulfilled.” Then, refocusing, the eyes came to rest on Nicholas’ face. “You won’t let me down, Nicky. Not now. Why, you’re almost my son-in-law.”

Nicholas turned away from the rain-streaked window as he heard Tomkin return. In a moment he felt the big man’s presence beside him.

“Now’s the time, Nicky,” Tomkin whispered. “I almost hit Nangi a couple of minutes ago. They’re like goddamned mules.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Nicholas began. “They’re doing just what I told you they would do. It’s only a matter of—”

But Tomkin had him by the coat sleeve. “Now, Nicky. We can’t afford to wait. You know that. You’ve seen the reports, for Christ’s sake. We’ll be eaten alive back home.”

“Then let’s give them Misawa. We can build—”

“No!” Tomkin’s tone was sharp. “Misawa’s a non-negotiable point—no matter what, understand?”

Nicholas took a hard look at his boss. “Are you all right? Maybe I should call a doctor.”

Tomkin winced. “Goddamned Japanese bug. I’m getting it from the inside as well as the outside.” He gave a short bark as if to dispel Nicholas’ concern. “Whatsamatter, Linnear, don’t you think I know the flu when I got it?”

Nicholas stared hard at him for another minute, then gave a curt nod. “Okay. Sit down at the table. I’ll be there in a moment. I want to be the last one. Then shut up and let me do the talking.”

“What’re you gonna say?”

“Don’t you like surprises?”

“Not with a multimillion-dollar merger,” Tomkin muttered but did as he was told.

Nicholas turned back to the blurred cityscape and thought of nothing. Behind him silence had settled over the room. He could smell the tobacco from the fresh cigarette Nangi had lit, hear the soft whir of the central air-conditioning. Nothing else.

Strategy. He went back to the master, Musashi. What was called for here was a variation of “Existing Attitude—Nonexisting Attitude.” He had been taught that in battle when one takes up the
katana,
whenever one springs, strikes, hits, even parries the enemy’s sword, one must cut the enemy in the same movement. If one thinks only of springing, striking, hitting, or parrying without the inner sense of cutting, no damage will be done.

Nicholas took three deep breaths. He turned and went back to the conference table where the other five men were patiently awaiting him. He now knew what he had to do, but he required a clue to the Japanese strategy before he could decide how to do it.

He looked to Nangi, who was in the process of tapping his cigarette on the edge of the ceramic ashtray before him like a conductor bringing the assembled to order.

“Perhaps we have covered as much ground today as it is possible to,” he said in a neutral tone of voice. Sato shook his head immediately.

“In my experience, bargaining is often difficult. Pathways are often locked for long periods at a time, then quite suddenly are free. I think we should continue.”

Nicholas watched this charade with intense interest. He had encountered this bear and badger strategy before; he knew it well, in fact. When he had been working for Sam Goldman’s advertising agency in New York, he had suggested just this line to take on a recalcitrant client. It had worked quite well. Goldman had been the bear on that one—the hard man. That had made the client instinctively want to bring Nicholas into his camp. Nicholas had played the badger—the soft man—to perfection.

Before Tomkin had a chance to respond, Nicholas said, “As far as I can see, we’re at a total impasse. I agree with Nangi-san. I don’t see where further discussion at this time will do any of us any good.”

“You want to break this off?” Sato said somewhat incredulously, so startled that he neglected to use the polite form of address.

Nicholas nodded. “Unless you can come up with a more constructive suggestion, I’d say the best thing for all of us would be to cool off for a while.” The thing was to confuse the roles: side with the bear, rebuff the badger.

“My feeling is,” Sato said quietly, “that a recess will only solidify our respective positions. The next time we meet, I fear we’ll be even further apart, more committed to making a stand.”

“None of us, I think, wants a confrontation,” Nicholas said carefully. “We’ve come here to work together for mutual profit.” He paused, fully expecting Tomkin to chime in with a statement reiterating the urgency of starting up the chip-manufacturing process. But the other was silent.