Thomas Hoover - The samurai strategy

"Have to be a quick in and out for damned sure. This hot-air balloon won't stay up for long." He paused, clearly not wild about the idea. "Tell you what, though, maybe if we had a real good story."

"Ideas?"

"Well, how about this? Maybe we've just heard on the grapevine that those outfits on Noda's play list have started a little 'white knight' talking. And since this is just speculation, we might as well think big. Know who I mean?"

"The pride of Armonk."

"Give that man a gold star. We both know IBM headquarters ain't talked to nobody but God since Watson outgrew his short pants, so it'd be weeks before they'd stomp on some horse-pucky rumor about how they were looking into saving whatever's left of the chip business here. Just covering their ass, we'll say. Friendly mergers. No poison pill stuff."

"That's exactly the kind of specious 'supporting detail' that always triggers the Street's greed." I concurred. "Offhand I'd say that sounds just about perfect for tomorrow's hot tip on the Exchange floor."

In truth it did seem like a workable first draft of an idea. No law against deep background sources that turn out to be 24-carat bullshit down the road. The antitrust implications would be front page for a couple of days, but since the administration adhered to the 'see no evil' school of regulation, that angle wouldn't impress the smart money. America starts thinking big, chucks the myth of garage entrepreneurs, and staves off Japan using a dose of MITI's own medicine. IBM rides in to rescue what's left of Silicon Valley. It might just make Matsuo Noda back away. He'd learn America could play hardball too.

We told Bill to take the rest of the day off. Jack was, I can report, noticeably encouraged. Tam also. For my own part I just crashed, with a few wistful reflections on my rocky non-seduction. But if we pulled off our little scam, she might be more inclined to take me seriously.

As Shakespeare said, Lord, what fools these mortals be. I realized the true extent of Matsuo Noda's reach on Monday, just after noon. I was still home when Tam called from the office uptown to inform me of the latest developments. I was so busy on the phone just then, planting merger rumors with a few friendly columnists, that I was almost annoyed to take time out for her call. However, she quickly captured my attention.

First, the revisions on DNI's acquisition program were in full swing. Noda had started purchasing those healthy semiconductor outfits on the new list.

Then she went on to say that an additional set of buy orders had just gone out over the wire. Noda had been on his satellite hookup to Tokyo all morning, and he'd now finalized official authorization for a minor expansion, so to speak, in DNI's program. Apparently Tokyo had agreed with him that his portfolio should include a certain high-grade issue to achieve better overall "balance."

She didn't say much more, for obvious reasons, but we both had a strong hunch what must have happened. If anything was bugged, for chrissake, it wasn't my apartment. That's B-movie stuff. It had to be my phone.

Matsuo Noda had just kicked off a new buy program to the tune of three and a half billion. For what? More high-tech stragglers? Not precisely. One company, and in an amount intended to stay safely just below the Securities and Exchange Commission's Form 13-D mandatory reporting. Twenty-five million shares of IBM, roughly a full four percent of Big Blue.

It was a massive variation of the "Pac-Man" takeover defense: you eat anybody you think wants to eat you. Noda's message to us was loud and clear: he could buy the USA anytime he wanted. Dai Nippon was unstoppable.

I hung up the phone very slowly.

"We've 'moved the shadow.'" I spoke the words to myself hesitantly, maybe even a little apprehensively. That was the name for a famous strategy of the seventeenth-century swordsman Miyamoto Mushashi, using a feint to lure your opponent into prematurely disclosing his battle plan.

The way I saw it, Matsuo Noda now stood revealed. It had all been a setup. The financial scam, the help-American-industry cover, the MITI "guidance." This was a takeover, all the way. A global takeover. What else could it be?

And the only people on this side of the Pacific who knew were Matt Walton and Tam Richardson.

For some reason that thought brought to mind the professor at Stanford, the AI guy who'd disappeared. What was it Tam had said? He'd had dinner at her apartment? Asked her to do something for him in Japan? And her MITI friend, whose name was all over that stack of memos on the table downstairs? Asano. Where did he fit in?

One thing, he'd helped Noda recruit her. They'd worked together, and their play had been flawless.

But now our friend Matsuo Noda had a small headache. Tam Richardson and Matt Walton had exposed the underside of his game. The shadow had moved. Which meant it would only be a matter of time before he struck.

Where was our weakness, hers and mine? What would cause us to lose our rhythm, to blunder? He'd already outmaneuvered Jack O'Donnell with ease. He had a master swordsman's unerring instinct for his opponent's weakness. So where was mine? I had to know it before he found it.

He'd realized Jack could be blackmailed, if the stakes were his constituents' jobs and lives. But I didn't need a job. And the only life…

Of course! It was obvious. Amy.

Could it be I was dealing with a madman who made people disappear?

If I was about to take on a pro like Noda, I had to cover every possibility. Which meant I had to get her out, away, beyond his reach. Today.

Still, though, there were so many questions. Who was really behind all the moves, the master puppeteer? Was it only Matsuo Noda, or was this possibly, just possibly, something that wound its way even higher. If so, who was the point man on that? Akira Mori?

The only rational countermove now was to back off and "survey prevailing conditions." Miyamoto Mushashi's keiki o shiru to iu koto. But to do that we had to remove ourselves beyond the reach of Dai Nippon's sword. How long did we have?

I glanced at the clock on my desk, the little Sony digital. The number 12:18 stared back, the two dots in the middle flashing every second. Amy was still at school, and for the moment I couldn't think of a safer place. They wouldn't even let me in without a pass. She didn't get out till four P.M.

So now what?

Simple. In swordsmanship, vigilance is everything. And there are two things you always have to keep in view. The first is called ken, the surface actions, the moves your opponent wants you to see. The second, and more important, is kan, the essence of things, the real truth. Ken covers the superficial moves; kan gives you the big picture.

Instinctively I still believed we had only been witness to ken, the distractions, the insignificant feints of our opponent. The deeper wisdom of kan still lay beyond us. Time to probe.

We had three and a half hours.

I got up and headed downstairs to retrieve a couple of very important memos. If we needed them, we'd have them. The rest of the pile I brought back upstairs and locked in the sword room (the closest thing I had to a safe). Finally, I reflected a second and paused to scribble Emma a note, asking her to feed and walk Ben in case I wasn't around for a while. That taken care of, I retrieved my heavy topcoat from the front closet, walked out into the street, and grabbed a cab for the offices of Dai Nippon, International.

Maybe our opening move should be uromekasu to iu koto, to feint a thrust that would induce a state of confusion in Noda's mind. Then we could stage a tactical retreat to plan the final, all-out attack.

Retreat to where? Well, that part at least was easy: the obvious hideaway was my place down in the islands. The thing to do was to quietly catch American 291 and head for the Caribbean. If Noda did manage to track us down, he'd be in for a surprise. Let me explain.