Second Skin (32 page)

‘It’s all right that you’re thinking of her,’ she said softly. ‘It’s only right and natural. Justine was your wife.’

Nicholas turned back to her, the pain so evident in his face her heart broke. ‘It isn’t that she died; I’ve come to terms with that. It’s the guilt. I left her alone and desperately unhappy. She pleaded with me not to go. She had come to hate Japan and I knew it. I just didn’t believe it. I chose to ignore all the warning signs.’

‘Her death was an accident, nothing more. She and a friend were driving back to the house from Tokyo. You were in Venice with Mikio Okami.’

He nodded. ‘I tried to call her. Twice. It was the middle of the night but the phone just rang and rang. She was so angry at me, she probably didn’t want to talk.’

That’s not the point. Even if you had been in Tokyo, you couldn’t have saved her. It was her karma.’

He took her in his arms and kissed her. She was right, as always. He had to let it go. ‘Let the past be the past,’ he whispered. ‘Karma that you and I met again.’ He stroked her, breathed in the scent of her hair, closed his eyes, and felt a kind of peace steal over him. ‘I’m so lucky to have found you.’

The underground food courts of Tokyo’s enormous department stores were jammed throughout the shopping day. But after five o’clock, when the stores closed, they were deserted. The court at the Ginza branch of Tamayama on the Harumi-dōri was a vast marketplace arrayed like an English garden maze, an orderly design of formal structures and aisles in order to make shopping at the panoply of different stations that much easier.

There was something eerie about this sub-street-level floor at night. Even the cleaning people were gone, and surfaces shone and glittered dimly in the service lights, empty of wares and, therefore, of meaning. Transformed into form without substance, the stations, so alive with transactions during the day, were now cast adrift like the growing number of homeless on Tokyo’s sidewalks.

But behind the food court was another, far more private gathering place. In contrast to the food court, however, it was generally deserted during the day. Used mainly at night, it served Mick in good stead. The fact was he – and a number of Korean partners – had bought Tamayama two years ago. The recession at retail had ground down the reserves of a store that had been dedicated to delivering high-fashion names at top dollar to the Japanese consumer. The recession had transformed Tamayama’s success into bankruptcy almost overnight. Mick and his partners had come in, thrown out nine-tenths of the fashion names, and substituted house brands imported from Taiwan, Malaysia, and mainland China.

The response had been nothing short of miraculous. A populace formerly fixated on brand names were more than happy to buy quality items at half the price. So the dresses, skirts, suits, trousers, and blouses didn’t have Chanel or Armani couture labels. They looked good and the prices were right. Now Tamayama’s new regime was applying the same principle to durables and electronic goods made in Southeast Asia, mostly by Mick’s own companies. Vertical retailing had come to Japan with a bang.

Tonight, Mick had arrived early to oversee every phase of the dinner that would be served to the members of Denwa Partners whom Ginjirō Machida, the chief prosecutor, had invited. Unlike most such business gatherings, the food was every bit as important as the speech-making.

When Mick emerged from the kitchens, he saw that the wood-paneled room was decorated in the muted colors he had prescribed. The long cherrywood table shone magnificently beneath the huge cut-glass chandelier. Cutlery and stemware glittered and sparked like diamonds in a Tiffany’s window, and at each place a calligraphied card rested with the name of the designated attendee.

Twelve men were in the room, along with Machida. The chief prosecutor made the introductions, one by one, in the formal Japanese manner, while waitresses in kimono and obi circulated with glasses of Louis Roederer champagne, beluga malossol caviar, and toro, the fat-webbed sushi Japanese loved. The room was already blue with cigarette smoke, and a haze not unlike the smog hovering over the city outside collected just below the ceiling, trembling in the eddies of chill air from the air-conditioning ducts.

Soon thereafter, Machida called the room to order, and the men, peering at the place cards, worked their way to their assigned seats. When, at length, they were all seated, Mick took his place at the head of the table. Machida sat opposite him, at the other end of the table. One setting remained vacant.

This was a signal for the attentive serving staff, who uncorked bottles of Corton Charlemagne. Mick gazed down the long table much as a benevolent dictator looks to attending his satraps, with a certain but unmistakable steely charm. The golden French wine flowed as freely as the water in the fountains of Paris. Everyone was in a receptive mood, expectant and in good spirits. Mick had not been wrong. To these men, the recession had only reinforced their almost obsessive love of everything rare and expensive.

‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ Mick said, making eye contact with each man ranged around the table. ‘I am honored that you have agreed to attend this momentous gathering. And may I say it was a distinct pleasure to meet each and every one of you.’ So much for the soft part of the evening, he thought.

The waitresses placed a small plate of salad in front of each man. Honniko appeared through the kitchen door, pushing a small cart in front of her. On it was an outsize tureen of chased silver and a large ladle. She stopped before each setting and tabled out a heaping portion onto the center of each salad.

To a man, the attendees glanced down at what she had served them, trying to identify it. The food looked like large beans, striped black and yellow, steeped in some kind of clear and viscous glaze.

‘Our first course comes from China, from inside the walls of the Forbidden City, in fact.’ Mick lifted his hands and broadcast his most electric smile. ‘Tonight, gentlemen, we eat like emperors!’

The men took up their forks and began to eat. Mick gave Honniko a brief nod as she left the room after serving his portion. He did not, however, look down, but rather cast his countenance around the table at all the well-groomed and impeccably dressed men.

‘I had a prepared speech to make tonight,’ he began, ‘but yesterday I chanced to overhear a debate in Ueno Park between two elderly gents who seemed quite knowledgeable about the current state of the world. One claimed that the masses are destined to kowtow before any ideology that appeals to their baser instincts.

‘What does he mean by that? Consider: home, hearth, self-preservation. These are elemental instincts in man – good instincts, we would all agree, correct? But how many racial and ethnic wars the world over have been started and kept going by the rallying cry of home, hearth, and self-preservation.

‘This is not a coincidence. Look at the proliferation of Fascism in the wake of Communism’s worldwide demise. In Germany, the neo-Nazis are inexorably on the rise. In Italy, voters have brought to power a coalition dominated by men who consider Mussolini their idol. In Russia, dissatisfaction with the chaos of a free-market economy has brought to prominence a man who says, “Russia first. Burn all others!” – who says he is determined to go to war to reclaim Alaska from the United States. Today, there are millions who call these men great!

‘“Well,” said the second man, “perhaps there
is
greatness in men prepared to risk everything to break away from the old order, the corrupt ways, the cozy coalitions that have kept each other in power since the end of the War in the Pacific. Corruption that is so well entrenched requires extreme measures. Can such endemic evil be rooted out any other way? Do not the ends justify the means?’”

Mick raised a hand. ‘Do we automatically condemn those charismatic men who have the power to galvanize large masses of people to carry out their vision? Or are the means these men employ – sometimes ruthless, coldly efficient, absolute – justified by their vision of a future ethnically streamlined and supremely productive by the codification and enforcement of law? Do we – as acknowledged leaders, the elite of society – stand by and do nothing while society devours itself like a mongrel dog? Or do we seize society by the throat and impose the necessary harsh rule in order to properly govern and guide the masses? This is an age-old question. It has been debated by philosophers, politicians, generals, and theologians through the ages without them having come to any definitive conclusion.’

Mick opened wide his arms as if to embrace the entire room as the waitresses took away the salad plates. ‘I hope you have enjoyed your Imperial appetizer. Now as we take a break between courses, I wish to go around the table and ask each of you in which camp you place yourself.’ He nodded deferentially to the gray-haired man on his immediate left, who was head of a well-known electronics trading firm. ‘Perhaps we can begin with you, Asada-san.’

‘The debate seems clear enough,’ Asada said. ‘Just after the war we created the Liberal Democratic Party by unacknowledged mutual consent. It remained the unchallenged ruling party, and until three years ago, it had absolute control over Japanese politics and policy. Without the leadership of the LDP and its handpicked prime ministers, Japan would not have achieved the great economic miracle that transformed it from a defeated nation on the brink of crippling inflation and unemployment to an economic colossus.’ He nodded. ‘At times, the means the LDP used to maintain control of the country were ruthless and – yes, cruel, by some standards. But we all agreed it had to be done; it was in the best interests of Japan. History has spoken most eloquently. Therefore, I say the ends
do
justify the means.’

One by one, the men around the table answered in much the same words.

When they were done, Mick said, ‘I congratulate all of you for understanding the nature of true greatness.’

‘But what does it matter?’ Asada asked. ‘Those were the old days, and as we all know, the old days are gone. The LDP has been deposed and we are left with a ruling coalition so fragile, so devoid of a consensus on how to govern, that we have a new prime minister every six months. I defy anyone in this room to tell us where in this time of constant compromise our future lies. Nowhere, that’s where. If only we could return to the way things have been.’

Mick leaned forward on his arms, his eyes alight with a religious fervor. ‘You are wrong, my friend. Think again of the debate between these two men. The first one, who decries the progress of history in
whatever form it takes,
is living in the past. He takes comfort in the way things have been. Perhaps that is you, as well. Conversely, the man who seeks to justify men whose primary rallying cry is “I hold the future in my hand!” is living in the future. He thinks only of the way things should be.

‘But I tell you this, gentlemen: neither of them have a
today,
and so they are doomed to be relics of history’s inexorable march.’

Mick waited a beat, luxuriating in the scent of tension perfuming the air. ‘As are you all, unless you can take that great leap of faith to change the way you view your life and the world. Unless you join me in the most audacious – and lucrative – venture of the coming century!’

He spread his arms again, and now the gesture had the effect of taking them all inside his protecting embrace. The doors to the kitchen opened and the waitresses flowed in, Honniko at their head. Mick’s voice softened from its proselytizing edge as he said, ‘Gentlemen, this is the all-important decision I leave you with while you take time to savor your main course. Please enjoy yourselves!’

A new round of wine was uncorked, a deep, rich red this time, a 1960 Pétrus. Then the entrée was served, a dark meat stew, pungent with aged balsamic vinegar and sautéed onion. Japanese rice, of course, on the side, along with slender stalks of baby asparagus.

Mick raised his wineglass high, toasted their health, and watched them dig in. He found Honniko’s eyes from across the room. He gave her a slight nod again, and she shooed her charges back into the kitchen.

‘Consider the masses, slaves of the media. Now consider yourselves – men of such intelligence and will that you are
above
the rest of mankind. You are slaves of no one.’ He used the mesmerizing rhythm of the righteous, the incantatory rhythm of the political polemicist, the Baptist minister, the rapturous televangelist. ‘You are the overlords.’

It was a dark and charismatic human stream from which he was drawing, one that knew no boundary of race, creed, or religion, but that resided somewhere within all men, slumbering like a serpent, all too ready to slither to the surface.

‘The cultural and philosophical diversity now considered politically correct in countries such as the United States is the ideal medium for breeding the overlord,’ he continued. ‘In this atmosphere of openness and creativity, he becomes stronger and richer than he could possibly have been under more oppressive societies. Prejudice – the bane of the politically correct individual – would cut off the overlord’s development in the bud. Universities – filled with potential acolytes – are now
paying
rich fees to propounders of racial hatred in the name of diversity and freedom of speech. In just such an atmosphere does the overlord thrive.

‘And what do I mean by an overlord? One meant to rule the masses.’ He reached out his hand, extending a forefinger, dramatically moving it around the room as it settled in turn on each man ranged around the dinner table. ‘You, Asada-san... you, Morimoto-san... you... and you... and you.’

His finger cut through the air like a scythe.
‘All
of us here who are special, who live our lives by different rules, who come and go as we please, who gather power around us as the emperor gathers his ermine cloak. We see the future, a future the common man crawling by beyond these walls cannot even imagine.
This
is what we all have in common. Japanese or Caucasian, it matters not, for we speak a common language.’

As he lowered his voice, he could feel them leaning forward so as not to miss a word. ‘We have a right – no, no, a
responsibility
to take advantage of the freedom a politically correct society offers us.’ He raised a forefinger. ‘Which we can do – beginning right here, right now at this table.’ His hand swept over the food. ‘It is no coincidence that we eat like emperors tonight, gentlemen. It is a form of initiation, a magical rite.’ He smiled winningly. ‘You know, in the jungles of Vietnam and elsewhere in the real world, there is a strong belief that the first step to the true defeat of your enemy is to devour him whole!’