All the businessmen had been advised by the Japanese Trade Council that Lena Lippincott had met only two weeks earlier with the President of the United States, and so all knew what the meeting was about, and they were surprised he was late.
Around the table, the times on the LCD watches ranged from five minutes and twenty seconds after eleven to five minutes and twenty-seven seconds after eleven.
Mariko Kakirano said mildly in Japanese: "I wish he would hurry. I have other pressing business."
There were thirteen nods of agreement, and all looked toward the door of the oak-panelled board room of the Ginza Bank, Tokyo's largest.
"I'm sure he will be here shortly," said another businessman. Thirteen faces turned to him as he spoke and nodded agreement when he was finished. In a small conference room twenty feet away from where the Japanese businessmen sat, Lern Lippincott was having a different thought.
"I don't want to go," he told his secretary. Lippincott rubbed his fingertips up and down along his smoothly shaven pink cheek.
"I don't understand, sir," said his secretary, a young man who wore a black suit, white shirt and black tie so naturally that it looked as if he had been born in a morgue.
"Nothing to understand^' said Lippincott. "I just don't want to go. I don't feel like it. Something doesn't feel right." He stood up. He was a tall man, the only one of
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the three Lippincott sons to be tall like their father, but unlike his father, whose rail-lean figure still looked like the body of an oilfield roustabout, Lem Lippincott had a big soft belly and a wide behind.
He walked to the window and looked down on the teeming street, then turned away quickly as if he had seen something he didn't like.
His secretary was worried. Lippincott had insisted upon being flown into Japan in a private airplane. He had insisted upon being driven to the hotel room from the airport in an American car, driven by an American. And he had literally sneaked into the hotel through a back entrance, first sending the driver up to make sure he would not meet any hotel personnel on the way. Once in his room, Lippincott had given his secretary instructions that he wanted no maids to come into his room.
"But your bed, sir?"
"I'll make my own damn bed," Lippincott had said.
They had left the hotel for the morning meeting the same way. Down a back elevator, into a waiting car with curtains over the windows, and up a back flight of steps to this meeting room.
It occurred to Lippincott's secretary that the American businessman had been in Tokyo nearly twelve hours and had not yet seen a Japanese.
Lippincott paced the delicate patterned rug in the small room like a caged animal. He rubbed his hands together over and over, as if washing them of some infinitesimal speck of dirt.
"I hate this yellow rug," he said. "They got small rugs in this country. Small, yellow rugs. Everything
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small and yellow. You're not getting enough sun, Gerald, you're getting pasty."
The secretary sighed under his breath. Breakdown.
"I'll tell them that you've been taken ill, sir," he said.
Lippineott looked up as if, for the first time, realizing that his secretary was in the room.
He shook his head.
"No, no, that'll never do. Don't you know, boy, we Lippincotts never get ill. Father wouldn't hear of it. We'll go to your freaking meeting. Let's just get it over with fast."
As they walked down the short hallway to the conference room, Lippincott leaned next to his secretary and whispered, "Stay close to me. I may need you."
The secretary nodded, even as he wondered what Lippincott meant.
He stepped ahead of the taller man to open the door to the conference room, then moved aside to let Lippincott go in first.
The fourteen Japanese businessmen, as they saw Lippincott in the doorway, rose to their feet as a sign of respect.
The secretary saw the American recoil a step, as if expecting an assault on his person.
Lippincott froze there a moment and the secretary walked around in front of him into the room.
"Thank you, gentlemen," he said. "Will you please be seated?"
The fourteen men sat down. The secretary turned to Lippincott and smiled at him, as if to reassure him. Lippincott nodded, but came into the room slowly, seemingly searching for land mines.
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He came to the end of the table nearest the door and pulled the chair out. He pulled it four feet from the table, turned it sideways and then sat on the edge of it. It was as if he was expecting to have to make a dash for the door at any moment and this would give him the biggest headstart. The Japanese looked at him with polite curiosity. Manko Kakirano stood up at the table and moved his chair four feet from the table too, then sat down again. The other thirteen businessmen did the same. To get something from their attache cases now, they would have to stand and walk to the table.
The secretary saw beads of sweat appear on the Lippincott forehead. The businessman hissed to him:
"Gerald, you get a chair. Sit between me and them."
Definitely a breakdown, the secretary thought. Unless he was very mistaken, Lern Lippincott would soon be spending some time at the ha-ha house.
The Japanese sat quietly, smiling, until Gerald was seated. He put his chair halfway between Lippincott and the table, but at an angle so he could watch both the Japanese and Lippincott. The American businessman was sweating now like a marathon runner, looking around the room, from yellow face to yellow face. Was he searching for someone? Or something? the secretary wondered.
Lippincott opened his mouth to speak.
Each word seemed to be a labor to produce.
"You gentlemen know why we're here," Lippincott said haltingly, a pause between each word.
There were fourteen nods at the table.
"The President wants the Lippincott companies, through your companies, to open up trade with Red
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China, as a way of increasing trade and helping the dollar. That's what he thinks."
Fourteen more nods.
"I know better," Lippincott said. His speech was speeding up.
"I know you little yellow devils can't be trusted," Lippincott said. "You think I forgot Pearl Harbor?"