Free The Kaisho by Eric Van Lustbader Page B

the economic humiliations plotted for them in some moldy subbasement of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
    Tojo lives! might well be their battle cry, though he had begun to notice springing up like noxious mushrooms in a humid climate posters of the Imperial rising sun of Japan encircled with a red line, another red line running diagonally through it.
    These were to him nothing more than a symbol of the moral bankruptcy of his country—an advertiser’s dream, where even the most complex issues could be reduced to simplistic decals.
    Gaunt closed his eyes for a moment. He was a massive man, with as much fat as muscle, a three-letter man in college athletics who, typical of his kind, assumed that heavy physical exercise once accomplished need not be continued to maintain form. He had been a wide receiver of no little renown and, on the mound of a baseball diamond, had once possessed a slider that justifiably intimidated the opposition. Only being hit in the shoulder by a wicked line drive had kept him out of professional sports.
    Lucky for him, no doubt, since even if his bank account would have swollen, his mind would have atrophied. The fact was that Gaunt was possessed of an intelligence rare in his chosen field of administration. He could summon up that astonishing leap of insight usually the purview of programming geniuses and maverick entrepreneurs. This was how he had come to the attention of Nicholas Linnear and why Nicholas had promoted him to managing director, North America, of Tomkin-Sato Industries.
    Now that intuition told him that his ten-o’clock was poison. He put his fingers to his forehead, closed his eyes for a moment as if with force of will alone he could cause Edward Minton to disappear.
    “Mr. Gaunt?”
    “Yes, Suzie.”
    “It’s ten-fifteen.”
    Gaunt sighed. “In that case send Mr. Minton in.”
    If Gaunt’s body had lost the hard athlete’s edge it had possessed in college, his face had not. It was still firm-jawed, and there was no wattle under his chin as, astonished, he had noted in many of his classmates at their last reunion. His hair, still thick, was flecked with gray, but this matched the sprays of that color in his brown eyes. What lines appeared in his face were like those etched by a fine sculptor—they seemed to belong there, to, moreover, have always been there, part of his craggy strength, his canny insight.
    Edward Minton was, on the other hand, a whole different story. Tall and thin, he had that stoop-shouldered mien of those made self-conscious at an early age of their ungainly height. He had skin the color of wax paper, by which hue Gaunt’s worst fears were realized: he was government-issue, and right now that was as ill an omen as a crow in a cornfield.
    Minton wore a three-piece suit, shiny at the elbows, rumpled at crotch and sleeves, of an indeterminate color and material. No doubt it was fire-retardant. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles above a straight nose, thin lips. Behind them were the clear blue eyes of the raptor. Gaunt was unsurprised to see a gold Phi Beta Kappa chain strung from the watch pocket of his vest. Politicians were like dogs, Gaunt observed silently. They liked best to lie down with their own breed.
    “Mr. Minton,” he said now, wrapping a smile around his lips, “won’t you sit down. What can I do for you?”
    Minton, who had brought with him his own gust of ill-scented air, settled himself in a leather-and-chromium chair on the other side of Gaunt’s old, scarred mahogany desk.
    “Quite a crowd you’ve collected downstairs,” Minton said with the brittle tone of a scolding mother.
    “These things have a way of blowing over,” Gaunt countered. “By tomorrow afternoon the war in Yugoslavia will be back on the front page.”
    “Perhaps not this time.” As Minton spoke, he fondled his Phi Beta Kappa in that conspicuous way certain men will a magnificent woman whose services they have bought for the evening. “These are hard times in America