Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [121]
"Yes, I do. Only for a few months. I have to shock the bastards, Jack. We will have a fair-trade deal, after twenty years of screwing around, but they have to understand that we're serious for once. It's going to be hard on them, but in a few months they're going to be believers, and then they can change their laws a little, and we'll do the same, and things will settle down to a trading system that's completely fair for all parties."
"You really want my opinion?"
Durling nodded again. "That's what I pay you for. You think we're pushing too hard."
"Yes, sir. We don't want Koga to go down, and we have to offer him something juicy if we want to save him. If you want to think long-term on this, you have to consider who you want to do business with."
Durling lifted a memo from his desk. "Brett Hanson told me the same thing, but he's not quite as worried about Koga as you are."
"By this time tomorrow," Ryan promised, "he will be."
"You can't even walk the streets here," Murakami snarled.
Yamata had a whole floor of the Plaza Athenee reserved for himself and his senior staff. The industrialists were alone in a sitting room, coats and ties off, a bottle of whiskey on the table.
"One never could, Binichi," Yamata replied. "Here we are the gaijin. You never seem to remember that."
"Do you know how much business I do here, how much I buy here?" the younger man demanded. He could still smell the beer. It had gotten on his shirt, but he was too angry to change clothes. He wanted the reminder of the lesson he'd learned only a few hours earlier.
"And what of myself?" Yamata asked. "Over the last few years I've put six billion yen into a trading company here. I finished that only a short time ago, as you will recall. Now I wonder if I'll ever get it back."
"They wouldn't do that."
"Your confidence in these people is touching, and does you credit," his host observed. "When the economy of our country falls into ruin, do you suppose they will let me move here to manage my American interests? In 1941 they froze our assets here."
"This is not 1941."
"No, it is not, Murakami-san. It is far worse today. We had not so far to fall then."
"Please," Chavez said, draining the last of his beer. "In 1941 my grandfather was fighting Fascists outside St. Petersburg—"
"Leningrad, you young pup!" Clark snarled, sitting next to him. "These young ones, they lose all their respect for the past," he explained to their two hosts.
One was a senior public-relations official from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the other a director of their aircraft division.
"Yes," Seigo Ishii agreed. "You know, members of my family helped design the fighters our Navy used. I once met Saburo Sakai and Minoru Genda."
Ding opened another round of bottles and poured like the good underling he was, dutifully serving his master, Ivan Sergeyevich Klerk. The beer was really pretty good here, especially since their hosts were picking up the tab, Chavez thought, keeping his peace and watching a master at work. "I know these names," Clark said. "Great warriors, but"—he held up a finger—"they fought against my countrymen. I remember that, too."
"Fifty years," the PR man pointed out. "And your country was also different then."
"That is true, my friends, that is true," Clark admitted, his head lolling to one side. Chavez thought he was overdoing the alcohol stuff.
"Your first time here, yes?"
"Correct."
"Your impressions?" Ishii asked.
"I love your poetry. It is very different from ours. I could write a book on Pushkin, you know. Perhaps someday I will, but a few years ago I started learning about yours. You see, our poetry is intended to convey a whole series of thoughts—often tell a complex story—but yours is far more subtle and delicate, like—how do I say this? Like a flash picture, yes? Perhaps there is one you could explain to me. I can see the picture, but not understand the significance. How does it go?" Clark asked himself drunkenly. "Ah, yes: 'Plum blossoms bloom, and pleasure-women buy new scarves in a brothel room.' Now," he asked the PR guy, "what is the