stretched, wandered around the office, drank some more green tea, and

inquired of Jim Bob how things seemed to be proceeding.

"Looking good." He grinned. He was now working Hong Kong and
the Asian exchanges, limbering up the satellites as he flashed our (DNI's)
money around the globe. Anybody heard from Henderson? Not a word,
he said in a tone that seemed disconcertingly pat.
I briefly toyed with heading down to the street and trying to locate
an early "bulldog" Times to see what kind of a splash we were making in
the press, but since Tam was now sound asleep, I figured I'd better stick
to duty.
I vaguely recall stumbling into my office to rummage for an old box
of NoDoz stashed somewhere there in the desk, and thinking how nice
it would be just to lean back in the chair. . . .
A phone was jangling in my ear. As I pulled erect, the clock on my
desk was reading ten-thirty—My God, A.M.—and I felt as if I'd been
run over by an eighteen-wheeler. What the hell was in that green tea
Tanaka had been brewing?
Inside the receiver at my ear was Emma, and what she had to say
brought me awake like an ice-cold shower. In a voice
brimming with triumph, she announced she'd just resigned and I could
consider this official notice thereof. In fact, she was price-shopping
Florida condos this very minute—what did I think of Coral Gables?—
and I was lucky she'd bothered to take out time to inform me of her
intended plans. By Wednesday she expected to be able to loan money to
the Rockefellers, in case they should need a little liquidity on short
notice.
How'd you come by this sudden fortune? I asked. Where, she
snapped back, have you been? The Dow Jones average was about to
double, if it hadn't already. Funny, but the rest of the market was going
nowhere. Oddest thing she'd ever seen. However, it only went to show
what she'd always told me, and if I'd listened to her instead of those
smarty-pants uptown brokers, I'd be rich now too. Stick with the blue
chips. IBM was up thirty percent since yesterday, AT&T was flying, GM
was selling for a price that would make you think they were back in the
car business.
What the hell was she talking about! That's when I noticed a copy
of Tuesday's New York Times lying there on my desk, right next to the
phone. Only at first it didn't seem like the Times. Or maybe Punch
Sulzberger had just been swallowed whole by Rupert Murdoch, because
I hadn't seen a headline that arresting since the Posts immortal "Coed
Jogger Slain in Bed." It was banner, right across the top; the Times'
headline writer was practically orgasmic. But whereas the Post gets off
on mere sex, the good gray Times reserves its libidinous juices for that
ageless aphrodisiac, money.

New York Stock Exchange Prices Explode

NEW YORK—Volume skyrocketed on the floor of the New York
Stock Exchange yesterday, as buyers for Big Board issues responded
worldwide to a renewed confidence in American industry. Analysts are
calling this the first leg of the Great Bull Market of the 1990s, saying this
surge has been overdue for a decade. Leading the phenomenal rally were
a number of America's foremost corporations. . . .

I came off my chair like a shot and headed for Tam's office. "Is anybody
following what's going on outside?"
Her face was down on the desk, dark hair tousled across her cheeks.
She looked up and rubbed her eyes, obviously knocked out too.
Strange.
"What . . . ?" Her voice was slurred.
"Something's gone crazy," I yelled. "Where's Henderson?"
Then I remembered he wasn't there. However, I did locate Jim Bob
easily enough. He was in Noda's corner office, wideawake and still
carrying our Uzi. Only now there were two of those long black
automatics present, the other lying atop the wide teakwood desk.
One more thing. Seated behind that desk, his silver hair framed by
the sunlight streaming through the wide back windows, was . . . Matsuo
Noda.
The Shogun had arrived.
And with him came the dawn of a new, powerful reality. My
drugged mind was flooded with the ramifications. Matsuo Noda, I now
realized, had been on to us from the start. Once again he had used us.
He had been the one who had emptied the office, the better to lure us
in.
But the guards . . .
Noda-san, I bow to a true samurai. A swordsman's swordsman. Of
course, it was as simple as it was elegant. You were testing us, allowing
us a plausible opening, just difficult enough to force us to reveal our
true strategy. The dictum of the masters: "If you want to strike your
enemy, let him try to strike you first. The moment he strikes you, you
have already succeeded in striking him." Pure bushido.
 Everything up till now had only been feints. What I assumed was
the battle turned out to have merely been staking out terrain, jockeying
for position. At last, though, we were ready for the real engagement.
Trouble was, Matsuo Noda had just secured the high ground.
"Come on in and have yourself a seat, Walton." Jim Bob beckoned
toward the vacant chair as he sipped from a glass of California
champagne, its plastic-looking bottle stationed on the floor beside him.
Coors time was over.
"Jim Bob, what's happening with the market?" I was ignoring Noda
for the moment, trying to get a firmer grasp on the new "prevailing
conditions."
"'Bout what we figured," he replied, his white suit now greasy and
wrinkled. "Yep, looks like we're roughly on schedule."
"It's a relief to know there's a timetable." I finally turned to Noda.
"Wouldn't want this takeover to be half-cocked."
"Mr. Walton, if you would be so kind." He smiled and indicated the
chair. "It would be well for you to join us."
Jim Bob waved me over with his Uzi. "Fact is, we're all about due
for a little show and tell." He glanced up as Tarn entered the doorway.
"Be a good idea if you got up to speed on what we're doing here, too."
"I just scrolled some prices," she said, glaring groggily at Noda, the
morbid realization descending rapidly now. "You don't have to tell me
anything. I know exactly what you're doing."
"What we're doing is, we're pulling this country out of the shit.
That's what we're doing. We're saving this country's ass. Which is more
than anybody else here's doing," Jim Bob continued, satisfaction in his
voice. "How in hell did you ever think you could pull something like
you were trying? Mr. Noda here could squash you all just like a june
bug anytime he gets a mind, take my word for it."
Noda still hadn't amplified the new Dai Nippon scenario, but he
didn't really need to bother.
"Jim Bob, don't spoil the fun and tell me. Let me try to guess." I
glanced over at Noda, then back at him. "He suckered you in with his
'Rescue America' spiel. World peace at a price."
"Well, tell you the truth, the man did buy me lunch."
"I'll bet that's not all he did, you opportunistic son of a bitch."
I examined Noda. "How does it feel to have Japan about to be sole
owner of IBM and AT&T and GM and . . . guess I could just check the
supercomputer out there for the full list."
 "Certain strategic corporations." Noda smiled benignly. "It had
become the only meaningful direction to proceed, Mr. Walton. I'm
afraid our other measures were clearly too little, too late."
"Why bother with the small fish, right? If you're going to buy up
American technology, do it right."
"Mr. Walton, we both know it is inevitable. Neither you nor I can
alter the tides of history." He sighed. "Perhaps Japan can provide the
management guidance required to save America's industrial base, but it
cannot be achieved merely by dabbling. Stronger measures, much
stronger, were required. I finally came to see that. The problem was how
to do it without a major psychological disruption of the market and
more Japan bashing. Then by the greatest of good fortune, you solved
my problem for me." He nodded toward Tam. "Your new trading
program, Dr. Richardson, which allowed us to operate anonymously,
was ideal. Why not make use of it? Particularly since Mr. Henderson had
the personnel to render it operational."
While digesting that, I returned my attention to Jim Bob. "Let me
guess some more. Ten to one you bought 'call' options on the Big Board
issues he was planning to take over."
"Well, they were bound to go up." He flashed a reptilian grin as he
adjusted the Uzi, now a bolt of black against his rumpled white suit. "If
you're standing by the road and a gravy bus comes along, what are you
going to do?"
"Terrific. Be a pity for this insider windfall to go to waste. Just
wanted to make double sure you got a piece for yourself."
"Does a bear crap in the woods?" he inquired rhetorically, then
tipped back his head and drained the champagne glass.
"Right. So naturally you bought call options on the Blue Chips,
locking in a cheap price just before Noda's money boosted them into the
clouds."
"Safe and simple. Of course, some traders go for index options, S&P
500*s and indicators like that, but that's always been too airy-fairy for
me. When the market's set to head up, I just buy calls. Heavy leverage.
No risk."
I concurred. "Nothing too abstruse."
"The thing of it is, I'm more comfortable dealing with reality," he
went on. "I like to kick the tires, check under the hood, so that index
crap's not my style. Like I always say, if you've got hold of something
you can't figure out how to drink, drive, or screw, maybe you oughta
ask yourself what you're doing with it."
 A pragmatic criterion, I agreed. 'Though it's rather a pity you didn't
cut me in on the play. I could have used the money."
"Walton," he replied, "it downright pains me to have to be the one
breakin' the news to you, but you could have used the money more than
you think. Whose bank balances do you figure I've been using to test
out that platinum program?"
"In the spirit of intellectual curiosity, Jim Bob, does our new system
for blowing capital show promise?"
"From the looks of my early churning, I'd say you got yourself a
winner."
The fucker. How in hell did he get access to my money? I decided
to just ask, whereupon he obligingly explained.
"Well, we're hooked into every bank computer in town." He was
unblinking, a drugged-out zombie. "Account numbers aren't exactly a
state secret, given the right phone call. Same goes for trust funds."
Trust funds?
"Let me be sure I've got this straight. You've also wiped out my
daughter Amy's college money? She's now penniless too?"
"We're close, real close." He reached down and retrieved the bottle,
then sloshed more of the cheap bubbly into his glass. "I'm figuring I can
have everything down to a goose egg by sometime round about . . .
lunch, probably."
I decided then and there I was going to kill him, and Matsuo Noda,
with my own bare hands. The only question was whether to do it at that
moment or later.
"Jim Bob, for the record, you two've just fucked with the wrong
guy. When somebody starts messing with Amy's future, I tend to lose
my sense of proportion."
"Nothing personal, Walton. You just had to be stopped, that's all."
He grinned. "Figured it'd get your attention. Besides, way I see it, this
man here's absolutely right. He's got the only answer that makes any
sense."
"As long as sellout artists like you get rich in the process."
"It's in the grand American tradition, buddy. Enlightened self-
interest, better known as looking out for number one. Everybody else
here's hocking this country's assets to Japan and gettin' rich doing it. So
why not? Besides, we've still got a ways to go. Time to give you-all a
piece of this thing too."
"If we play ball?"
"Exactly."
 "You greedy prick." I was considering just strangling him on the
spot, nice and uncomplicated. "Noda's not here for anybody but himself.
He's—"
"That's not the way I see it." He glanced over toward The Man, who
was still silent as a sphinx.
"You wouldn't have the brains to understand even if we told you.
But maybe there's something you can comprehend." I glanced at the
metal grip of the Uzi on Noda's desk. One lightning move and it was in
my hand. "I'm not going to let you do this."
"It's already done, pal." He lifted his own Uzi and leveled it at my
forehead, grinning, his little idea of a joke. "I've got that NEC mainframe
out there programmed for weeks of trading. Billions . . . Pow!" He jerked
the barrel upward, then continued, "Way I've got it rigged, ain't nobody
can turn it off now. We'd just as well all go fishing."
"Jim Bob, take care with that gun. Somebody might just decide to
ram it down your scrawny throat."
"Ain't gonna be you, buddy." He reached for the champagne bottle
again, no longer grinning.
"Mr. Walton." Finally Noda spoke again. "I assure you this is for the
best. What you two were planning was very ill-considered. Not to
mention that, if I'd actually permitted you to sink Dai Nippon's capital
into some volatile commodity and then manipulate the markets, you
might have given our institutional investors an enormous loss of
confidence in my program. I have a responsibility to make sure that
never happens." He studied Tam. "Dr. Richardson, you especially
disappointed me. You betrayed my trust, something I always find
unforgivable."
"You betrayed my trust." She looked ready to explode. "Lied to me,
exploited me, used me. You perverted everything I had planned—"
"As I've explained, this had become necessary. There was no other
way."
"How about Ken, and probably Allan Stern?" she interrupted. "Was
taking their lives 'necessary' too?"
"You have no proof of that," he continued smoothly. "I would
further suggest that too much speculation is not a healthy pursuit, Dr.
Richardson. In the marketplace or in life."
"I'm not speculating."
"As you wish. In any case I think we both realize it is never prudent
to meddle in matters beyond one's concern."
 "There's a small detail you may have overlooked, Noda-san," I
broke in. "That bogus sword. What are you planning to do when we
blow the whistle?"
"My timetable for Nipponica is now proceeding on schedule, Mr.
Walton." He glanced at the Uzi on the desk, his voice ice. "Consequently
you are expendable as of this moment."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

If the swordsman casts aside two thoughts, life and death,

nothing can defeat his mind.

That was the credo of the formidable warrior-samurai Bokuden,

who lived during the early seventeenth century. Focus on Noda, I told
myself, not on staying alive. What we had to do was overcome him and
the money of Japan by the power of mind. By beating him at his own
game. That was the only way we could win.
As I saw it, we might actually have the advantage. We knew his
strategy, so all we had to do now was move inside his defense perimeter.
In a way we were even closer than he realized. Noda was obsessed with
Nipponica, and a samurai concentrating on his sword is not able to
attack. The thing to remember was rhythm, the beat. We had to get out
of sync with him, disrupt his pacing.
When Tam and I retreated to my office, I noticed that my katana
was missing. No surprise, but it didn't really matter. We would be using
the "no sword" technique anyway, moving under his hilt, then going in
for the kill. Jim Bob would be our new weapon.
At the moment Noda's new hatchet man was strolling around the
floor in his dingy white suit, toting his Uzi and monitoring us with an
occasional vacant stare as he watched the terminal's flash. His bumpkin
facade, incidentally, had to be the best acting job I'd seen since the Royal
Shakespeare. He may have been a spaced-out options hustler at heart,
but he could coach Machiavelli on duplicity. A worthy opponent.
"Just hit nine percent of IBM." He glanced at a CRT screen as he
ambled down the row next to my office, swinging the automatic.
"Telephone looks good for twelve percent by
opening bell tomorrow. Good thing we've got a computer and these fake
accounts. Otherwise we might have to cut the SEC in on the news a little
too early."
Well, DNI was nothing if not organized; "global trading" was on a
roll. There would be no way to trace Noda—or to stop him. By the time
anybody realized what was afoot, he'd be well on the way to having us
literally bought out. God knows, Japan had the money.