“Okay,” the senior man said. “You can come inside but wait by the door and let me do the talking.”
A petite young woman in a conservative gray skirt and matching jacket opened the door to the boardroom at precisely fifteen minutes past ten. Her hair was pulled back in a pink plastic clip. A white silk blouse was conservative and alluring at the same time.
Watanabe entered behind Masamoto and took a standing position to the left of the door as ordered. Eleven men, none under the age of fifty, sat in high-backed leather chairs around a long oak table. It was highly polished, and their dour expressions could be seen in their reflected faces on the surface of the wood. A tall man with thick white hair sat at the far end of the room, commanding the head of the table. He wore a tailored blue wool suit that accented his athletic build and a shockingly red power tie.
The man looked up from an open folder, both hands flat on the table. Dark eyes, kind and soft as those of a favorite uncle, met the gaze of the two yakuza men. Watanabe could not help chuckling to himself. This would be easier than he had thought.
Masamoto would, no doubt, assume this to be Yanagi, the owner and chairman of the company, since he sat at the head of the table. But Watanabe knew better. He’d taken the time to research Yanagi Pharmaceuticals on the Internet. The man at the head of this table was perhaps in his early sixties, but nowhere close to the company owner’s seventy-four years.
Masamoto gave his introduction, invoking the name of the boss and his organization. He kept his tone civil and his words humble, but the inference was clear. His boss had come into possession of certain photographs of a senior vice president from Yanagi Pharma engaged in a delicate situation with an underage girl in Thailand. In truth, the boss had followed the man on a business trip, gotten him drunk, and set him up. But that didn’t matter. What was important now was company reputation. Masamoto assured everyone at the table that with a seat on the board, he could keep this volatile information away from the media and stockholders.
All the men stared down at their respective stacks of paperwork, avoiding eye contact or even admission that a problem existed. The young woman in the gray business suit stood dutifully on the other side of the door, hands folded in front of her, face passive. Watanabe could not be certain, but he thought he could smell peppermint.
The man with white hair at the head of the table was anything but passive. The picture of polite behavior, he sat ramrod straight, nodding every now and again to show he was paying attention. In the middle of Masamoto’s presentation and proposal, the man took a fat tortoiseshell fountain pen from the pocket of his white shirt and made a note, as if to record some special bit of knowledge that was too precious to forget. His face appeared to glow with genuine happiness that the yakuza men and come to pay him a visit. Watanabe felt himself leaning forward, wanting to be closer to the man, to bask in his kindness.
At length, Masamoto reached the end of his practiced speech. He bowed, pushing the incriminating photos toward the head of the table.
The white-haired man sat still for a long moment, smiling and blinking kind eyes. Then, in the space of one of those blinks, the eyes grew flint-hard. One instant he was a kindly gray-haired uncle, the next, a seething, anger-filled mountain devil.
Focusing on Masamoto as if to set him on fire, the man snatched up the fountain pen and began to twirl it back and forth on slender fingers. Watanabe marveled at the precise movements. These were not the hands of a business executive.
The white-haired man stuck out his bottom jaw, breathing heavily. Watanabe would not have been surprised if fire had shot from the man’s nostrils. The pen flipped back and forth between his fingers, floating almost automatically as if moved on its own accord and not because of anything he did.
“Exactly what is it you would do?” the man asked, challenging.
Watanabe jumped when the man spoke. He glanced at the girl to see if she noticed. She was pretty, in a harsh sort of way, and he worried she might think him less of a man if she had seen him startled. She stared straight ahead like a store mannequin.
Masamoto bowed again, obviously buying time to think. Surely he hadn’t expected such a transformation from the dried-up company executive. “What would I do?” He let his eyes flit to each man around the long, polished table, as if one of them might throw him a life raft. “What would I do?” he repeated.
Watanabe had to force himself not to roll his eyes. Surely the boss should have put him in charge.
“Yes,” the white-haired man said, kind and smiling again, as if he was Masamoto’s uncle and wanted him to give the correct answer. “How do you envision your role in the company?”
“I, well… I would…” Masamoto stammered. Watanabe could see sweat forming on his sempai’s forehead. He knew things were about to go from bad to worse. When Masamoto became nervous, he got mean. Watanabe was no stranger to violence himself. He’d taken part in kidnappings, torture, had even helped dismember a girl and dump the pieces in the ocean on the other side of Shika-no-shima Island — but he had enough sense to know when a more diplomatic approach was warranted. Brute force was the only trick in Masamoto’s arsenal.
The man at the head of the table pointed his fountain pen at the stammering yakuza soldier as the good humor bled again from his face. The man’s emotions flowed back and forth like waves of the sea. Watanabe felt his stomach lurch at the suddenness of the change.
“It is just as I thought.” The man’s voice dripped with acid disdain. “You bring nothing to this table but empty threats.”
Here it comes, Watanabe thought. It was his duty to support his sempai, but he kept his hands locked behind him, hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
“I assure you,” Masamoto snapped like an angry child, “I bring the protection of our organization.”
“Protection from what?” the white-haired man demanded.
“I would offer protection from fear,” Masamoto said. He shot a glance at Watanabe, proud that he’d come up with such a fine answer so quickly.
The white-haired man stopped, then nodded as if Masamoto might have actually given a good answer. He removed the cap from his fountain pen and made a few notes in the folder in front of him. When he was finished, he blew gently on the ink, then set the pen on the table. Rising from his seat, he took off his suit jacket and draped it across the back of his leather chair. He picked up the fountain pen and began to twirl it again; this time he left the cap off so the gold tip glinted in the boardroom’s fluorescent lighting.
Watanabe’s eyes widened at the sight of the man without his suit coat. Long, fluid muscles moved under the white shirt like those of a racehorse under shimmering skin. This was no ordinary old man.
“Fear?” The man stepped around the table to face Masamoto as if they were gunfighters from an American Western movie. “Tell me. What do I have to fear?”
They were still twenty feet apart, but something told Watanabe that was much too close.
Masamoto looked helplessly at Watanabe for an answer. “You… We… You. .”
The white-haired man put up a hand, silencing the dumbfounded gangster, moving ever closer as he spoke.
“Sometimes,” he said, “it is wise to fear things that are certain do us great harm. Such a notion that we might be injured keeps us safe. Don’t you think? Have you ever heard that there are four things to fear in Japan?”