The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Samurai Strategy, by Thomas Hoover This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org ** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below ** ** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ** Title: The Samurai Strategy Author: Thomas Hoover Release Date: November 14, 2010 [EBook #34323] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SAMURAI STRATEGY *** Produced by Al Haines ============================================================== This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, http://creativecommons.org/ ============================================================== THE SAMURAI STRATEGY ”A financial thriller right out of the headlines.” Adam Smith A high-finance, high-tech thriller that correctly predicted the 1987 stock market crash. It was the first fictional treatment of a major international concern of the Eighties. Set in locales as diverse as Wall Street and the offices of Japan's powerful Trade Ministry, THE SAMURAI STRATEGY describes a scenario of murder, worldwide currency manipulation, a revival of Japan's smoldering nationalism, and is set against a background of a new high-tech computer milieu. Matthew Walton, a freelance corporate 'takeover' lawyer is hired by a mysterious Japanese industrialist to purchase a New York office building and begin a massive 'hedging' in the financial markets. Two weeks later, off an island in the Inland Sea, divers working for the industrialist's organization, recover the original Imperial Sword, given to Japan's first Emperor by the Sun Goddess, Japan's 'Excalibur', and lost in a sea battle in 1185. He forms an '800-Year Fund' and billions of yen flow to his fingertips. He then dumps all the Treasuries Japan had acquired and devastates the American economy. As the story rushes to its stunning conclusion, Matt Walton goes to Japan and determines that the 'Imperial Sword' is, in fact an unusual antique he once owned himself. BOOKS BY THOMAS HOOVER Nonfiction Zen Culture The Zen Experience Fiction The Moghul Caribbee Wall Street Samurai (The Samurai Strategy) Project Daedalus Project Cyclops Life Blood Syndrome All free as e-books at www.thomashoover.info Wall Street Samurai (The Samurai Strategy) Thomas Hoover www.thomashoover.info THE SAMURAI STRATEGY A Bantam Falcon Book / June 1988 All rights reserved. Copyright © 1988 by Thomas Hoover. Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. OPM 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 Key Words: Author: Thomas Hoover Title: The Samurai Strategy Wall Street, Japanese Stock Market, Treasury bonds, Stock Market, Imperial Sword, Emperor of Japan, Japanese History, Supercomputer The following story is entirely imaginary . I hope. CHAPTER ONE New York, New York. Friday, early September, dusk. Heading uptown on Madison. Sheets of icy rain washed the pavement, heralding the onslaught of autumn and the miserable winter to come. The city was poised for its cruelest months, that twilight of the spirit when strangers arm-wrestle for taxis, nobody has time to hold a door, and you cherish every fleeting human kindness. Bring on the blizzards, the holiday madness. This winter I was planning something long overdue. To treat my daughter Amy, the Madame Curie of her ninth grade, to a real vacation. Just us. We'd leave at Thanksgiving and stay gone through the Christmas break. She got to live with me three months a year, and December was by God going to be one of the months. School? She'd already skipped a year; maybe she was a little too fast- track for thirteen. Since Joanna, my ex, had already lined up her own holiday excursion (Amy the spy claimed it was with some divorced Tishman VP), she hadn't bothered inventing the usual roadblocks. Clear sailing. We'd open the house down in St. Croix and spend a month getting reacquainted. Work on the tan and some postgraduate snorkeling, a strategic move while I still enjoyed a small sliver of her attention, before a certain "totally terrific" skateboard virtuoso finally got around to noticing her. Only a couple of jobs needed finishing, but they'd be wrapped up with weeks to spare. That night, in truth, had its moments of nostalgia. The destination was Sotheby's auction house, a place where Matthew Walton was greeted by name at the cashier's window. Home away from home for obsessive collectors. I leaned back against the vinyl seat of the Checker, letting the rhythm of the streetlight halos glimmer past, and reflected on all those happy nights I'd made the trek with Joanna. She'd had no real interest in my collecting hobby, Japanese samurai swords and armor, but she was always a decent sport about it. Besides, she had her own passions. While I was agonizing over long blades and short blades, she'd sneak off and browse for something French and nineteenth century and expensive. Fact is, I'd usually plan ahead and have something of my own on the block just to pay for that little sketch, or print, she suddenly had to have. Out of habit I'd even shipped up a couple of mistakes for the auction this evening (a hand axe and a lacquered-metal face guard). Though tonight's sale had only a few odd items in my specialty, the slim offerings actually suited the occasion. It left the evening open, time for the real agenda—getting things rolling with a new client who'd inexplicably handed me a job as simple as it was strange. The man, name of Matsuo Noda, had rung all the way from Japan Friday before last, introduced himself in generalities, then declared he had a pressing legal matter requiring both speed and confidentiality. Inquiries had led him to me. Would I have time to help him locate an office building to buy? He claimed he was head of a Kyoto consulting outfit that called itself Nippon, Inc., and he was looking for something in midtown, seventy-million range. Honestly I couldn't quite believe he was serious at first. Why this job (just a little legwork, really) for somebody he'd never even met? I could swing it, sure, but now that Japanese investors were snapping up U.S. property right and left, who needed some ex- Texan turned New York lawyer knocking around? There was no rational reason to engage a corporate attorney. "Out of curiosity, why aren't you working through one of the Tokyo firms here in New York, say, Hiro Real Estate or KG Land? Surely they could—" "Mr. Walton," he interrupted smoothly but firmly, "allow me to say I have my reasons. May I remind you I stressed confidentiality." "Merely asking." I took a deep breath. The connection was distorted, a high-pitched hum in the background, as though he wasn't using commercial phone lines. "If you want, I can look around and see what's on the market . and in the meantime how about sending along a prospectus, just for the file?" "Assuredly," he said, "and I do look forward to working with you." After a few more polite nothings, he abruptly closed out the call. Peculiar. That wasn't how the Japanese road show usually did business. From what I'd seen, Tokyo invests very cautiously and deliberately, sometimes "researching" a deal half to death. I momentarily wondered if it wasn't just one of the jokers from my old partnership pulling my leg. He was real enough. A brochure arrived by overnight air, bound in leather, with a flowery covering letter. Two problems: most of the thing was in his native tongue, and what I could read didn't tip his hand. From the looks of its public disclosures, Nippon, Inc. was merely some kind of money manager for Japanese investment banks; it had almost no assets of its own. All I could find listed were a few million dollars, lunch money for a Japanese outfit, mostly cash parked in some short-term Euroyen paper. That, and a head office in Kyoto, was the sum of it. What's more, Noda only worked with Japanese banks and firms. No foreign clients. So why did this man suddenly require space in New York? An entire building. I honestly couldn't figure it. On the other hand, with any luck the whole deal probably could be put together with a few phone calls. By way of introduction, let me say that I worked, technically, as a straightforward attorney-at-law. I say "technically" because I was, in fact, a freelance defensive back in the corporate takeover game, which these days is anything but straight. You'd have to go back to the roaring twenties to find so many creative screw-jobs. Some people are drawn to power; guess I'm more attracted to the idea of occasionally whittling it down to size. So when some hotshot raider found a happy little company whose breakup value was worth more than the current stock price, then decided to move in and grab it, loot the assets, and sell off the pieces—one of the players apt to end up downfield was Matt Walton. For reasons that go a long way back, I liked to break up the running patterns of the fast-buck artists. It's a game where you win some and lose some. The trick is to try and beat the odds, and I suppose I'd had my share of luck.