The Kaisho Read Online Free PDF

floor, walked past the deserted teak-and-chrome reception lobby, past silent offices and workstations, into his own office, which, together with Nangi’s, comprised the entire western-facing end of the floor.
    He crossed to a low couch in the welled seating area alongside a huge window and sat staring out at the city. The haze, pale as green tea, was a filthy nimbus, occluding his coveted view of Mt. Fuji.
    He knew that very soon he needed to return to America, not only to sit down face-to-face with Harley Gaunt, but also to lobby in person in Washington against the rising tide of animosity toward the admittedly arrogant Japanese. Gaunt had hired a man named Terrence McNaughton, a professional lobbyist, to work on their behalf, but Nicholas was beginning to believe that in these retrogressive times persuasion by proxy was not enough. Nicholas had thought of flying to Washington many times during the last several years, but always Nangi had convinced him of the need to stay here, to lobby their pro-international stance with the Japanese themselves.
    Nicholas, Nangi had argued with unassailable logic, was uniquely qualified to do this since the Japanese did not view him as an iteki, a barbarian outsider. Nicholas’s father, the Englishman Col. Denis Linnear, held a special place in the hearts of the older generation of Japanese, for he had been seconded to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s SCAP headquarters just after the end of World War II. It was he who had liaised so successfully with the upper-echelon officials when MacArthur had given the defeated Japanese a new democratic constitution that had survived into the present. When Colonel Linnear had died, his funeral was as widely attended and reported as that of any Japanese emperor.
    Nicholas became aware of Tanzan Nangi emerging onto the floor before he actually saw him. Nangi was now well past middle age. His face was striking, but not in any normal way. His right eye was an unseeing milky-white orb set behind a damaged lid forever frozen half-shut. Otherwise his face might have been that of a topflight diplomat who knew the exigencies of his world and how to maneuver among them.
    Nangi tapped on the half-open door to Nicholas’s suite with the end of his walking stick that was capped by a carving of a dragon. Depending on the time of day, his state of health, and the weather, he moved more or less stiffly on legs that had been damaged during the war in the Pacific.
    The two men greeted each other with warmth and the minimum of formality. It would have been far different had anyone else been in the room with them.
    They savored their green macha tea in the silence of close companionship, then commenced their morning business—the strategic planning for Sato, which they liked to have set before the rest of the staff arrived.
    “The news is very bad,” Nangi began. “I have been unable to come up with the capital you feel we so desperately need to expand into Vietnam.”
    Nicholas sighed. “Ironic since business is so good. Look at the last quarter’s figures. Demand for the Sphynx T-PRAM is far exceeding our current production capabilities.” The T-PRAM was Sato International’s proprietary computer chip—the first and only programmable random-access memory chip on the market. “That’s why we need to expand into Vietnam as quickly as possible. Ramping up new manufacturing facilities that meet our standards and which also hold down production costs is an exhausting marathon.”
    Nangi sipped his tea. “Unfortunately, Sphynx is only one kobun in the keiretsu’s vast network of businesses. Not all of them are doing so well.” Kobun was a divisional company within the keiretsu, the conglomerate.
    Nicholas understood the reference. Unlike Tomkin Industries before the merger, Sato International had always had ready access to capital until now, when the ground rules in Japan had suddenly changed. The most radical difference between American and Japanese corporations had