Thomas Hoover - The samurai strategy

Neither of these plans seemed particularly inspired. The first gave us nothing but presumptions for leverage, and the second could take hours. Noda, we all realized, was not a man who dallied.

"Actually"-Tam spoke up-"there's a third option. Surely Noda's going to find out sooner or later we came here to the Center. Believe me, he always learns everything eventually. So why not transmit something else now, anything, and then after you get the case open you can send the real data?"

"You mean, give him circumstantial cause to assume we've got the goods on him?" Sounded good to me. "Buying ourselves more time?"

"Right. It'll take him awhile to find out exactly what was transmitted. All he'll know for certain is that we sent something. In the meantime Ken can go on to Tokyo and proceed with plan B: open the case there and transmit the real contents."

He looked skeptical. "That might deceive everybody for a while, but not for long. There're too many links in the chain between here and DNI's New York office."

"But sending something now will gain time. It has to. Then you can go on to Tokyo and do what you need to from there. Tomorrow."

"Maybe." He still wasn't totally convinced. "But all right-rather than waste time arguing, let's just go ahead and do it. No harm in any instance."

She peeked into his briefcase, a jumble of documents. "What have you got in here that we could send?"

"Today's Asahi Shimbun…" He laughed.

"Ken."

"Okay, okay." He laid the newspaper aside and was riffling through his paperwork. "How about a few MITI memos?"

"Nothing to do with Marketshare – 90, I hope," said Tam.

"Promise."

The apparatus was already humming, so he put through the connection to JETRO's New York office, whereupon Tam took over and gave them instructions for the phone link over to the DNI mainframe. It probably required all of a couple of minutes. Welcome to the Brave New World of global information technology.

Since we were just shooting in the dark, they transmitted some twenty or twenty-five pages. Actually it would have been almost better to send too few rather than too many. At four pages a minute, though, we were finished in no time. As something of a joke, Tam suggested using the file name Nipponica, homage to Noda's takeover pipe dream. Somehow it seemed poetic justice.

Whether the transparency of our ruse would be immediately evident to Matsuo Noda remained a big unknown. But… maybe Noda would have no real way of discovering we'd sent garbage, at least not for a while. The transmission done, we signed off, zipped up Ken's briefcase, and marched out as if we knew what we were doing. Still, it was only a bluff, and a shaky one at that. Which set me to thinking.

"Ken, it seems to me yours is the critical path in this play now." We were walking back to the executive parking lot where we'd left his car. "It's more important to have a real copy of the data stashed somewhere than it is for us to blow the country in the next two hours. Which means maybe you ought to take the chopper back yourself, send the stuff today, and let us just drive down to Narita in your car?"

"I agree." Tam nodded concurrence. "We can leave it there and you could have somebody pick it up tomorrow."

"That's dangerous, for both of you."

"Maybe so," she said, "but he's going to come after this case, guns blazing, as his first priority. Ken, you're the one who's going to have to stay out of his way now, not us. The quicker you move, the better."

"You've got a point. All right, if you want me to, then I could take the copter back to Tokyo myself and you can use the Toyota." He was fishing for his keys. "In fact, maybe you should just leave now."

"Let me check the schedule." I'd asked his secretary for a listing of the afternoon and evening flights in case we got delayed. It was now one-thirty. The next flight that looked like a sure thing was a United at seven forty-two, or maybe the JAL at nine. Then there was a Northwest at ten-fifteen. Loads of time.

"Look, we can wait for the chopper and at least see you off. Why don't we head back over to the hotel and have a drink. Solemnize the occasion-the final nailing of Matsuo Noda."

"Fine." He started the car. "But both of you get only one, at least whoever's driving does. I want you back in one piece."

The hotel bar was beginning to feel like a second home, though now it was deserted, the lunch trade long departed. Our ceremonial libation also provided my first real opportunity to study Ken Asano at leisure. I sat sipping my Suntory while he repeated once again the details of his upcoming political move at MITI. Given any kind of luck, the flap would render Noda's takeover a worldwide scandal.

Good. Tam and I had been Noda's point men, had done everything we knew to assist him, and now it was clear he'd been using us all along for his own ends. He was bent on bringing American industry back to life for the sole purpose of skimming the cream.

What other reason could there be? Noda's noble intention supposedly was to help rejuvenate those American corporations doing basic research-but the price was then to let Japan lift that R amp;D and translate it into consumer technology, thereby keeping for his team all the elements of real economic value in the chain from laboratory to cash register. They would be the ones refining their strategic capacity to transform new ideas into world-class products and economic leadership. Japan would retain the advanced engineering segment of product development, while tossing a few low-skill assembly plants to the U.S. to make us think we were still part of the action. It would, of course, be a fatal delusion. The high-tech hardware of tomorrow's world increasingly would be Japanese, while America became an economy of paper-shuffling MBAs and low-paid grease monkeys assembling products we no longer were able to design or engineer.

That depressing conclusion required the space of one Scotch. By then I was ready to order a second, hoping it would bring forth a solution to the problem the first had evoked with such alarming clarity.

But there wasn't time. At that moment we heard the MITI copter settling onto the pad next to the hotel parking lot.

"Ken, here's to success." I saluted him with the last melting ice cubes.

He toasted back, then signaled for the bill. Time to get moving.

The chopper was a new Aerospatiale AS 365N Twin Dauphin, big and white, a VIP four-seater. Single pilot, capable of 180. (The Japanese love those high-rotor French copters.) Guess Ken had called in a lot of chips to arrange this customized three-wheeler for a couple of gaijin. The seat-mile costs alone must have been staggering. But there it was, fully serviced and set to go.

He walked over, ducking the rotor, and advised the pilot that there had been a slight change of plans. They'd be returning directly back to Tokyo. The man, wearing a blue uniform, bowed and gave him a little salute. They seemed to be old friends. Well, I thought, if deputy ministers don't use this gold-plated extravagance, then who's it for?

Then he returned to pick up his briefcase (Noda's silver box safely therein), have a brief farewell, and give us his keys.

"Tamara, telex me the minute you get back. We'll proceed immediately. Full speed."

"Let's go for it." She smiled and drew his face down for a long, languorous kiss. I then shook his hand, and we headed for the car. Since our bags were just little carry-ons, we looked solid to catch the United flight with a couple of hours to spare, assuming traffic cooperated.

"Tam, how about taking the wheel? This left-hand-side-of- the-road driving takes practice. I almost hit somebody once in England."

"Sure." She reached for the keys, then turned back to wave to Ken. But he was already climbing aboard and didn't notice.