The Samurai Strategy Page 3
Some people will swear life runs on coincidence. Is it true? If so, here's one for the history books. It's the tale of an old flame. Before my ex-wife Joanna, before my later ill-starred adventure with Donna Austen. The lady's name was Tamara Richardson, and she was a professor at New York University. When I knew her, though, she was merely an assistant prof with a shiny new Ph.D. At any rate, she was fresh out of Columbia's graduate school and very much starting out. I was too. Best I can remember, we met shopping for green groceries at Balducci's, just up Sixth Avenue from my place, and we saw each other a few times. It had to be at least fifteen years (how time flies) since our brief episode.
Tam Richardson, however, was not easy to forget. There was a kind of under-the-surface intensity about the woman that seemed always close to the ignition point. When you were around her, you were always worried somebody might accidentally light a match. However, she had no shortage of men in her life, and eventually we each went our own way. Ships that passed in the night. I never expected to hear of her again.
Things didn't quite work out that way, however. She started getting famous, as a thorn in the side of America's lackadaisical corporate management. Somewhere along the line, Tam Richardson had taken it upon herself to single-handedly kick some overpaid ass in America's plush boardrooms, and she wasn't trying to win any popularity contests doing it. She was the kid in the story who pointed out the emperor had on no pants, while everybody else was claiming his tux was a great fit. Guess you can't fire somebody in academia merely for saying what everybody knows to be true but doesn't have the guts to verbalize.
Then about a year ago, I noticed a full-length profile of her in an airline magazine spread about "America's New Achievers." No escaping her. Between the lines, I got the definite impression she hadn't really changed all that much over the years. She was around five seven, high cheekbones, dark hair that looked like it could use a brush, and eyes that made you think twice about giving her a lot of bullshit. Reminded me of, say, the young Glenda Jackson with a heavy spike of Debra Winger. For my money, though, she was just about ideal in the female department. Trim bottom, nice little twist in her stride, just enough cleavage to make you wonder. She didn't go out of her way to advertise, but you figured the goods were on board. My recollection in a nutshell? Tam Richardson was a better than average looker, damned smart, and she knew no fear. None.
There was something about her, though, that always left people puzzling. Where'd she come from? American, sure, but no way could she have been corn-fed Midwest like her surname. The answer was, she had a slightly more exotic, and probably painful, history than most of us. Maybe that was part of the reason she always seemed to be a loner, never went along with the crowd. The one time she'd tried that, it hadn't worked. I got to know her well enough to hear a bit of the story, but I'd sort of repressed the details.
Maybe I'd do well to come clean and admit I still thought about Tam from time to time. What's more, I gleaned from the magazine piece that she still lived right around the corner. Made me think briefly about giving her a call, get together for a drink, the old days, etc. But I finally decided I'd had enough high-spirited women for a while. Time to mellow down. Why go looking for lightning in a bottle?
She'd always liked three things: good-looking men, telling the high and mighty unpleasant truths, and interior design. Consequently it was no great surprise that the magazine devoted a photo spread to her rambling six-room apartment. The place was in one of those NYU-owned buildings on the west side of Washington Square Park, and it was definitely a knockout. She'd played off the old classic interior, a generously proportioned thirties layout, turning it into an environment that blended technology and design. Not for Tam, though, the utilitarian "high-tech" look so trendy a few years back; no ugly "state of the art" machines. It was eclectic—modernism here, deco there.
Take her library-office. I smiled when I noticed that next to the latest IBM PC was a "streamlined" Raymond Loewy- designed calculator, pure thirties. Same old Tam. On the other hand, just to keep it all from getting too serious, she also had a collection of kitschy salt and pepper shakers scattered among the books—a dog peeing against a hydrant, a naked babe with spicy boobs . . . she told the writer it was her "tribute to America."
The place was everything she was, a potpourri of the world, a mishmash of styles, and she clearly loved it. I probably missed a good half of the insider gags, this outrage up against that one, but I must say she brought it off with appreciable elan. Truthfully the place was a perfect reflection of the Tam I remembered—a woman who did her own thing.
She was now, so it said, a full professor at the university. Undoubtedly she deserved it. She was also director of their new Center for Applied Technology, which she'd founded. When the interviewer asked her which department the Center was under, she'd apparently shrugged and said "certain people" at the university wanted to bring it in under the School of Business. But the Center had outside funding, was doing vital work, and she was darn well going to stay independent.
Whoops. That ballsy crack, although perfectly in character, meant she was now giving the back of her hand to university politics. Mouthing off in a national publication about some departmental power play is no way to endear yourself to college deans. It lays bare all their petty empire-building. Didn't seem to worry her, though; just like in the old days, she said exactly what she was thinking and let the chips tumble.
Her major occupation in recent years, as anybody who reads the op-ed pages around the country knows, was to shame American executives into getting off their duffs, to make them start diverting some of their executive perks into the serious problem of getting this country competitive again. She had plenty of ideas where the corporate-jet money could be better invested. Over the years she'd knocked out half a dozen books on technology and the American workplace—office automation, computer-aided design in engineering, robots and computer-integrated manufacturing, that kind of thing. Tam Richardson still believed America could whip the world, but it would take more than speeches and flag waving. Her latest expose of America's corporate fat cats, which actually got a sidebar in the story, claimed they'd better start cutting their million-dollar salaries and putting the money into creating American jobs, or we'd all soon end up fetching coffee for the new Pacific Rim dynamos and buying our goodies at East Asia's company store.
Only she didn't bother to say it that nicely. Worse than that, the book actually supplied a long list of America's more notoriously overpaid CEOs. I suspect there were a lot of corporate contributors to the university who'd just as soon see her muzzled. Good luck, Tam.
Now the coincidence. The Saturday following my Friday night episode with the inscrutable president of Nippon, Inc., an event occurred that would soon bring Tam Richardson back into my life. Random luck? Fate? Anybody's guess. As it turned out, however, while I was on the phone leaving messages at country clubs for the building's attorneys, a mere five blocks away from my place Dr. Tamara Richardson was putting the final touches on preparations for an evening dinner party—destined to throw us together again only weeks later.
The dinner was supposed to be strictly social, to celebrate the beginning of her sabbatical—academic talk for a year off with three-quarters pay. There were a few dinner debts to square away, so the timing was perfect. She had several articles lined up; she'd finally axed a stormy year-long affair with a colleague in Economics named David Mason; and she was scheduled to begin a book on intelligent robots. She was trying not to think too much about academic politics and the real possibility her department chairman might consign her to some kind of academic hyperspace, there to teach freshmen for the rest of her tenured days.
By mid-afternoon she was down to the last-minute refinements on the evening's plans. Since the overnight rain had purged the soot from the air, she was feeling great. She put on a new Vangelis CD, worked a few modern-dance moves into her routine as she cleared the loose books out of the living room, a
nd continued trying to convince herself that breaking off with Dave Mason had been a smart move. After a while, though, she wasn't humming anymore, just thinking. Okay, it had only been a week, but why had she invited him to come to the dinner? Just to be a good sport?
The thing about it was, they'd actually had a more or less unspoken understanding not to inquire too closely into each other's occasional little diversions. They were both adults, right? This time, however, Dave had pushed it too far. He'd finally broken the rules, bringing one of his admiring grad students up to the apartment—her apartment. She bumped into them coming down in the elevator, and this one was a prize—stage makeup, bleached hair, the works.
Out of bounds. She'd nailed him right there in her marble lobby: you want to bang some Queens debutante, you'd better not be doing it here. This place is my home. She then told him to pack. The apartment was hers, and she wanted all signs of him out by Monday.
Then she'd invited him back for the dinner. Why? Could Humpty-Dumpty be put back together again? Crack eggs, make an omelet . . . she half smiled at the odd way your mind connects absurdities when you're a little overworked . . . .
That was when the phone rang.
Was it Dave, dropping out at the last minute to prove he could still piss her off, one more time? She headed for the kitchen, so she could at least chop some veggies while they argued for half an hour on the phone.
It wasn't Dave. Instead it was a scratchy old voice, one she loved. Shouting into a cell phone at Kennedy was Allan Stern, who announced in his staccato tones that he'd just stepped off a JAL flight fresh from some conference in Tokyo. He had to see her tonight.
"Tonight?" When it rains, it pours, she thought. "Allan, I'd love to, but I'm having some people in from school . . . What? . . . Well, sure, nothing that special . . . Allan, I adore you dearly, but you wouldn't know any of the . . . Okay, okay . . . Can you get down by eight?"
"See you then, Tamara. You're a dear."
Stern was an old, old friend, and a guy everybody in the country had probably heard of vaguely. Any freshman in computer science could tell you he was one of the unofficial founders of the field known as artificial intelligence, now usually shortened to "AI." As it happened, she had convinced him the previous spring that they ought to collaborate on a book about the growing use of smart robots in the workplace, but for some reason his input had never made it past the talking stage. She'd decided just to go ahead on her own with the writing.
Well, she thought, maybe he's decided to pitch in after all. Great. That would mean it might be adopted for a lot of college courses. Allan had plenty of respectability with the establishment.
He was probably the closest friend she had, her mentor almost. They went back to a Denver conference fifteen years ago, when he'd stood up in a session and challenged the conclusion of the very first paper she ever gave, though he'd come in midway through. Even then he had been a powerhouse in Washington, chairing one of the technical committees that reviewed federal grant applications submitted by university researchers. The inside talk on campuses was: love him or hate him, but think twice before you cross the opinionated bastard.
She was so mad she didn't care. She had sidled up to him at the coffee break and introduced herself, saying what an honor it was to meet a scholar so highly regarded, a man whose reputation was so well established. He nodded in absent acknowledgment, sipped at his Styrofoam cup, and stared over her shoulder. She then proceeded to advise the celebrated Allan Stern that he'd missed the whole thrust of her talk, which she'd explained in the introduction, and furthermore—judging from the data at hand—he struck her as a pompous asshole.
Such forthrightness, which was entirely new to Dr. Allan Stern's sheltered existence, so astonished him he apologized on the spot. By week's end he was trying to recruit her out to Stanford. He still was.
Allan was always punctual, to the minute, and that Saturday night was no exception. The doorman downstairs announced him at eight sharp. When she met him at the elevator, her first impression was he looked a trifle worn down. America's foremost futurist was gaunt, as always, but his trademark shock of white hair streamed over a lined face that was more than usually haggard. His hard eyes, which could bore through screw-off Congressional staffers like a pair of Black & Decker drills, were actually bloodshot. In short, the man looked awful. Then she remembered he'd just come in on the 747 directly from Narita. Into the teeth of the latest baggage-handlers' slowdown at Kennedy. Give the poor old guy a break.
She made him a drink and then asked, "Okay, Allan, what's up?"
"Later, Tamara. It's a long story." With which he lapsed silent. Very out of character.
About then everybody else started coming up, reasonably on time since Tam was known far and wide to hate the concept of "fashionably late." Also, she was a great cook. Bottles of bargain wine with the prices scraped off collected on the table in the foyer, and coats amassed in the second bedroom. Given that everybody knew everybody, it was mostly elbow patches and open collars. Only the women had bothered to dress. Simpson from Computer Science, whose wife worked in Admissions; Gail Wallace from Business, whose pudgy, skirt- chasing husband had guided two companies into bankruptcy; Alice and Herman Knight, who both taught in Economics (she was dean of the undergraduate college) and published as a team; Kabir Ali from Mathematics and his browbeaten little Iranian wife Shirin who seemed frightened of the world—and her husband. Only Dave had the nerve to be late and hold things up.
While they waited, they knocked off a little Scotch and white wine, trashed the administration, and complained about all the committees on which they were being pressured to serve. Around a quarter to nine Dave finally appeared, sandy curls askew to let her know where he'd been. She didn't even bother offering him a drink, just announced that everything was ready so let's adjourn to the dining room.
There're two kinds of dinners: ones that follow the rules, and ones that break them all. Tarn's were the latter. This time it would be real tallow candles and everybody's wine, including her own. Somehow her craziness always seemed to click; they inevitably came back for more. This time she'd decided to pay an offhand tribute to autumn and American cuisine. Cheddar cheese soup, marinated Ottomanelli's quail broiled with fresh sage, sweet potato fritters and baby peas, homemade corn bread, and then, as a change of pace (keep 'em off balance), an endive salad spiked with coriander. Dessert was an apple- walnut casserole, washed down with pots of McNulty's dark Haitian coffee. At the end she produced an ancient cognac you could inhale forever. By eleven-thirty everybody thought they'd just ascended to paradise.
She ordered Dave to take care of the dishes (since he'd been acting as if he owned the place, let him help), then led everybody back into the living room. In the park below the weather was perfect, and marijuana sales were in overdrive. A couple of joints also appeared around the room, accompanied by withering glares from Allan. Then, while Ed Wallace was chatting up Shirin and everybody else was drinking and smoking, Allan picked up his cognac and motioned her in the direction of the study.
Finally, she thought. This must be some story.
She was right.
It wasn't her book he wanted to discuss. Instead, he wanted to tell her about what he'd just seen, and not seen, in Tokyo.
"Loved dinner." He settled into a leather chair, the one next to her long bookcase, and drained his snifter. "I was afraid I was turning into a fish over there." He laughed, but only briefly. Social hour was over. "Tam, I wanted to ask you if you could maybe help me out with something."
"What do you have in mind?"
"Well, you know I've always thought I was on top of what Tokyo is doing, but now I'm not so sure anymore. I'm afraid things are starting to get away from me."
"Such as?"
"Okay. Now, it's no secret I've been to Japan a lot. I've got my share of friends over there, people I respect and admire very much. But this trip started to get very strange. It's as though I'm suddenly an outsider. Just another gaij
in. I'm puzzled, and I wonder if maybe I ought to be worried."
Gaijin. That sounds familiar, she thought. But it wasn't something that usually bothered Allan. She brushed her brown hair back out of her eyes and studied him. He'd never been more serious.
"What happened?"
He paused. "You know about their big artificial intelligence effort, called the Fifth Generation Project. If it goes the way they're saying, before too much longer they'll have programs, software, to design the next generation of computer technology. "
This was supposed to be news? Come on, Allan. Everybody knew. It was the talk of the industry. Japan's goal was computer logic capable of replicating human thought processes, a monumental, maybe impossible, undertaking.
"Allan, don't you remember we discussed doing a chapter on it in the robotics book? And if you—"
"Tamara, bear with me. You also know very well that project is Japan's attempt to leapfrog American technology. Added together with all their R&D on chip technology. In my opinion, by the way, our response is definitely too little, too late. More and more we're having to buy essential components for missile guidance systems from Japan. The Department of Defense is already nervous, but not nervous enough. We may have dug our own grave. And now I think our worst fears may be about to come true. Something funny seems to be happening, only I'm not sure what."
"What do you mean?"
"Let me close that door." He got up and did so, then turned back. "Maybe first I ought to tell you about the odd experience I had last week."
"Go on." She heard somebody in the living room put on one of her old Beatles albums—still the middle-ager's idea of hip.
"Well, as always, I scheduled a stop at the Fifth Generation lab to get up to speed on how their effort's doing. But all of a sudden it seems I'm too darned famous to be bothered with the shirtsleeve stuff. I tried to get in there for three days running. It was always the honorable Stern-san this and the celebrated Stern-san that and you must meet the head of every damned ministry and we have to set up this formal dinner and blah, blah, blah."
"Allan, you're the Grand Old Man these days." She laughed. "Get used to it."
"Wash out your mouth, Tamara Richardson. I'm not grand and I'm most decidedly not old." He sniffed. "No, it's as if they were very politely cutting me out. Okay, they didn't exactly say the project was off-limits now or anything, but there never seemed to be a convenient time to drop by the lab."
"Who knows? Maybe they just didn't want some American partisan poking about the place anymore."
"Could be. But why? I'm scarcely a spy for DOD, or the CIA. They know I only do pure science. Okay, maybe I'm old- fashioned, but Dr. Yoshida at least has always claimed to respect me for that. I used to spend hours with him going over his work there and vice versa. We swapped ideas all the time.
Now all of a sudden there's this smokescreen." He paused, sipped at his brandy, and then leaned back. "Which brings me to that favor I need."
"What?'
"Well, I was wondering if maybe you could try and get into the Fifth Generation lab yourself, check around a bit. See if you can find out what's cooking."
"Go to Tokyo?"
"I realize it's a lot to ask, but who else can I turn to? Tam, you're the only person I know who could pull this off. You know the technology, and they respect you. Also, you understand the language. Maybe you can cut through all the politeness and the translated PR. If you'd like a little per diem, I'll see if I can't shake loose the money from somewhere."
"Allan, really, don't you think you're maybe going overboard just a little. What if Dr. Yoshida was just tied up? The last time I visited the lab, he showed me everything, completely open."
"Ho, ho." He set down his brandy, and his eyes hardened. "I still haven't told you the clincher. There's some new guy in charge now."
"That's hard to believe. Yoshida practically invented the Fifth Generation Project. He's the director—"
"That's just it. Kaput. All of a sudden he's not around anymore. They said he's now 'technical adviser.' But you know what that really means. Removed. Sayonara. Promoted upstairs or downstairs or some damn thing. That in itself is mystifying. He's one of the most competent . . . oh, hell, the man is a genius. Why would they do that?"
"Very strange."
"Exactly. But now he's out. Couldn't even see me. 'On vacation.' The new director is some bureaucrat by the name of Asano. I spent a little time with the man, and I can testify he's a smoothie. Lots of pious generalities about 'technical cooperation.' But I got the distinct feeling he didn't want to talk details with me. Actually, I wondered if maybe he wasn't even a bit afraid to say anything."
Asano? Oh, shit. She took a deep breath. "Was his name Kenji Asano?"
"Ken. Right, that's his first name. Maybe you know him. I think he used to be a flunky with some government bureau
over there. But now he's just been put in charge of the Fifth Generation work. It's more than a little curious."
She puzzled a minute. From what she knew about the Fifth Generation, and about Kenji Asano, he had a lot more important things to do than run the lab. The "government bureau" he worked for was none other than MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. In fact, at last count he was Deputy Minister for Research and Planning, a top-ranked executive slot. Could this mean that Japan's ambitious artificial intelligence effort was being moved in on by MITI, their industrial war room?
"Allan, I'll tell you the truth. You may not have heard, but I'm in a fight now at the university. I expect to win, but I've got a lot on my mind. Notes for the book. I can't just suddenly—"
"Tam, I need your help. Look, maybe they've had some new breakthrough that none of us ever imagined." He paused. "Just between us, I lifted a strange MITI memo I found lying around an office when Asana took me on an escorted tour up to the labs at Tsukuba Science City."
She looked at him. "Was it classified?"
"How would I know? There was something about it. My sixth sense told me it was a document nobody was supposed to see. When I get back to Stanford, I plan to have a post-doc over in Physics make me a quick translation."
It was very unlike Allan to walk off with confidential memos uninvited. Which could only mean he must suspect something he wasn't telling.
"You'd better give me the whole story."
"Not now. Not yet. It's only guesswork, Tam." He glanced away. "Nothing to bore you with at the moment. But if you can find out anything, we'll write it up as a report I can circulate around the Hill. This could be important, believe me. Already Cray has started having to buy critical chips for its supercomputers from Japan. And while the Department of Defense is pouring billions into research on semiconductors that will withstand nuclear radiation, Japan is forging ahead on speed and miniaturization—what really counts. I think they could be about to have us by the balls, pardon my French. If they've somehow incorporated AI—"
"Allan, it doesn't add up. I once met Asano. In fact it was a couple of years ago at that Kyoto University symposium on Third World industrialization. He spent a lot of time trying to pick my brain about our specialized silicon-chip manufacturing here. But he wasn't the slightest bit interested in artificial intelligence."
"Well, prepare yourself for a surprise. He's plenty interested now. And knowledgeable. But still, it's not like the Japanese to do something like this, install some government guy to run an R&D program."
"That's certainly true." She strolled over, looked down upon the park, and began to want a brandy of her own as she chewed over the implications. Was MITI setting up some new high-tech industrial assault? If the Fifth Generation had been taken over by Kenji and his planners . . . "Allan, let me think about this for a couple of days."
"Don't think too long. I'm convinced somebody over there is suddenly in a very big hurry. I need to find out the real story. Am I just starting to go nuts in my old age? . . . Well, make that my prime." He grasped her hand for emphasis. "And you really should m
ake it a point to see this Asano fellow. If you already know him from somewhere, I'd say that's even better."
She started to respond, then stopped. She knew Kenji Asano all right. From a little episode at that conference, when he had invited the panel members of a session he chaired to a late-night tour of the endless tiny bars in Kyoto's Gion district. She remembered all the steaming sake and being ignored by flustered bar girls who were pretending that another woman wasn't around. They had no idea what to do about a member of their own sex there in their sanctuary of male flattery. Ken apparently had staged it mainly to watch their reaction, and hers.