Linnear 03 - White Ninja Read Online Free PDF Page A

Justine, who was clearly unable to comprehend the subtle nuances of life hi Japan. It did not occur to him to examine his responsibility in Justine's education.
    Now, as Nangi stared out of his office window, unmindful of the meeting's babble going on behind him, he felt a terrible foreboding, as if the computer attack had been an omen, a change in the wind. Because now he could feel a typhoon on its way, dark and malevolent and intent on his destruction.
    In fact the analogy was quite literal, because the typhoon was specific; the force had a name: Kusunda Ikusa.
    The call had come just an hour ago. An hour and a lifetime, Nangi thought. Now everything had changed. Because of Kusunda Ikusa.
    'Mr Nangi? This is Kusunda Ikusa.' The voice had come down the telephone line, hollow and impersonal. 'I bear greetings from the new Emperor.'
    Nangi had gripped the phone' tightly. 'I trust His Imperial Majesty is well.'
    'Well enough, thank you.' There was the slightest pause to indicate that the pleasantries were at an end. 'There is a matter we wish to discuss with you.'
    By 'we' Nangi was unsure whether Ikusa meant the Emperor himself or the group called Nami. But then again it was said that Nami - the Wave - carried out
    the new Emperor's will. Its members had certainly done so with the old Emperor up until the moment he went to his final, glorious reward. Nami, it was said, was the true heart of Japan. It knew the will of the Japanese people far better than did any prime minister or any bureaucratic ministry. Nami defined power in Japan, but that did not mean that Nangi had to accept its ideals.
    Nami was composed of a group of seven men -all of whom had ancestral ties to those families which had been most influential'in Japan before and during the war in the Pacific. They were neither businessmen nor politicians. Rather, they saw themselves as above such mundane concerns.
    Nami was interested only in the overriding directive of makoto - ensuring that the moral and ethical purity of heart of Japan was kept intact. But Nami's rise to power was itself an example of how purity could be compromised. During the early 1980s, Japan's roaring economy was based to an overwhelming extent on the worldwide success of its exports - cars and high-tech hardware and software. Four years ago, however, the yen began to strengthen to such a degree that Nami became alarmed. They saw - quite correctly - that a stronger yen would make exports more costly and, therefore, the breakneck rate of exports necessarily had to fall.
    In order to avoid any resulting precipitous drop in the Japanese economy, Nami had recommended the creation of an artificially induced land boom inside Japan. Nami reasoned that switching the base of the country's economy from an external source to an internal one would insulate Japan from the coming export shock.
    And while they were proved right in the short term, the danger was now increased that the boom could go bust overnight. Nangi distrusted artificial means to any end. What could turn an economy on its ear overnight could itself be displaced just as quickly. Japan was now
    sitting on the economic equivalent of a swordblade.
    If Nami's climb to almost unimpeachable power had come with the unqualified success of the land boom, it was consolidated earlier last year with the death of the old Emperor. No one trusted a successor to be able to keep the Emperor's image as the son of Heaven alive.
    But Nami's direct involvement in the affairs of the country was ominous. In Nangi's opinion, its rise hid a cabal of grasping, power-hungry individuals who had allowed then: power to warp the true meaning of makoto, purity of purpose. On the contrary, makoto had made the members of Nami arrogant, blinding them to national problems and the flaws of the Japanese as a whole. Overbearing arrogance and self-delusion were very much American traits; the fact that they had rooted themselves so firmly in the centre of Japan was of great concern to