Lady Joker, Volume 1

by Kaoru Takamura

  “I agree with you. All I can do is explain the situation to the best of my ability and ask for everyone to understand.”

  “Even so, it’ll get complicated, so as Kurata-kun suggested, we’ll prepare the materials they need to examine the pros and cons of whether or not to negotiate. How does that sound?” Shirai turned to Kurata.

  “We’ve entered the high-demand season for beer, and we also have the just-launched Meister to worry about. If there were to be an incident and we needed to recall our products, in the worst-case scenario we would need to prepare for a decrease in sales by half. I’ll run up some rough estimates—it’ll be quickest way for everyone to recognize the gravity of the situation.”

  “No, no numbers,” Shirai objected again. “If we start throwing around estimates, it’ll look like the damage to our product is a foregone conclusion. That’ll only invite more complications. For tonight, we should limit ourselves to stating that an attack on our products is a predictable outcome.”

  “But if the criminals say they’ll get in touch before Golden Week, there is a mountain of things that need to be prepared by then. We can’t afford to delay gathering the board’s consensus.”

  Shiroyama looked at the clock, which showed 6:20 p.m. It was about time for them to wrap this up.

  “Kurata-san. Regarding preparation, I believe there are practices we can implement within the framework of risk management, rather than assuming that our products will be damaged. We should aim to gather the board’s consensus under a more ambiguous context. In any case, I need for everyone to have an accurate grasp of the situation in which Hinode Beer finds itself. Only then would I like for them to outline how the corporation will respond to the circumstances predicted. I also need for them to okay the fact that I lied to the police. I’m counting on the both of you to take charge of the proceedings.”

  “Well, that’s it then,” Shirai said, slapping his knee. Beside him, Kurata said, “Shirai-san, will you convey the issue we discussed?” He bowed and excused himself.

  Shiroyama watched him go, then turned back to Shirai. “What issue?”

  “The incident with the mysterious tape from 1990 has been leaked to the rest of the board members . . . I won’t name names but I’ve asked a few executives whom they heard it from, and every one of them said they received an anonymous phone call at home before they came to work this morning. Actually, I received one myself.”

  “What did the caller say?”

  “That there had been a case of employment discrimination at Hinode in 1990. The caller had a Kansai accent . . . When I checked with the other executives, some said the caller spoke in a Kansai dialect, while others said it was standard Japanese, so I suspect there were multiple callers. As far as I could confirm, there are five executives who received a call. I’ve explicitly instructed them not to speak of the matter to anyone.”

  “Did the caller make any specific threats?”

  “No, nothing like that, but the names Takayuki Hatano and Hiroyuki Hatano were mentioned. Your niece’s name did not come up. In any case, since all of the calls were made to the executives at their home, it seems likely the source has some kind of connection with our company.”

  “What is the likelihood that Okada is behind this . . . ?”

  “I can’t say. Kurata said it’s possible they’ve decided to take advantage of the kidnapping incident to jolt us into making the land sale . . . In any case, we need to lock down the board.”

  After Shirai left, Shiroyama looked at the clock again. 6:27 p.m. He took another sip of Hinode Meister, but the beer had already gone flat and lost all flavor.

  At half past six in the evening, the eighteen faces that convened in the executive conference room included the fifteen directors from Hinode’s main office—excluding those from their subsidiary and affiliated companies—as well as the manager of general affairs, the director of public relations, and finally Kotani, the representative from the risk management company. There was no one to record meeting notes nor were there any beverages, and once all of the attendees had gathered, the soundproof door was closed and locked from inside, and a hush fell over the room.

  Since the autumn of last year, a whiteboard—a sight unsuited to this electronic age—had been placed inside the conference room. After the risk management system was introduced within the company, the main emphasis had been on information management, and the whiteboard was a means of substantially decreasing the volume of various documents being exchanged internally in the interest of confidentiality. Most business was conducted over electronic mail, and items that needed to be saved were managed in bulk on the company’s network server. The heaps of documents that used to be distributed at internal meetings had decreased, and anything that needed to be spelled out could be jotted on the whiteboard and erased after they were finished. These same rules applied to board meetings, without exception. For essential materials, each employee’s ID number would be stamped onto every page that was copied and distributed, to prevent loss or leaks.

  Kotani was the one who had proposed these reforms and, after obtaining the board’s approval, had gone on to create an explicit system of measures. The implementation of Kotani’s system met with considerable resistance from the board, and it only came about because Kurata and Shirai together pushed hard for it—the former citing the necessity of corporate defense against extortionists and the latter citing threats from industry spies and cyber crime. Yet even now, about half of the board members still grumbled about the costs incurred.

  It was true that the initial installation in the information management sector alone—designing the network security system; adding servers; digitalization of all telecommunication equipment, including phones; shuffling personnel in order to further strengthen the network; expenses for training employees for managerial positions—had cost them close to two billion yen.

  Moreover, in the crime prevention sector they had needed to increase the number of security cameras in all of their branch offices and factories and infrared alarm systems for after-work hours, produce all the various risk management manuals, and equip all employee ID cards with magnetic strips. When the Great Hanshin Earthquake had struck at the beginning of this year, they had taken the opportunity to further quake-proof their water tanks and private power generation system as well as to retain a company that specialized in backing up their recovery discs, so there were these additional costs. Each of these items resulted in meetings and more complications, and Shiroyama forced them all through, urging everyone that it was impossible to put a price on safety. Now that the man who himself had insisted on such measures had been kidnapped, the air that greeted Kotani in the conference room was, to say the least, chilly from the start.

  Kotani had been head of the Japan branch of a large property and casualty insurance company that was contracted by Hinode’s subsidiary in the US. The insurance company had referred Kotani to Hinode’s main office, and he had signed with them as a consultant. The impression he gave as a typical Harvard yuppie aside, certain aspects of his behavior and manner revealed that his sensibility was slightly different from that of an average Japanese person. Even now, in the hushed meeting room, he blew his nose—loudly and deliberately—causing the executives around him to furrow their brows in disapproval.

  The only person with the wherewithal to address Kotani was Shirai. “I hear the cedar pollen is particularly bad this year.”

  As Kotani began his report, it became clear that he did not interpret the current situation as a lapse in the system. He emphasized craftily that now was the time when risk management’s effectiveness would be proven.

  It was then and there Shiroyama learned that, as per the manual created the previous fall, over the last three days a special top-secret control center had been installed and was up and running in an underground storage room beneath the opera hall. Kotani said that, starting tomorrow, the point of contact be
tween their public relations and the press would also be directly linked to this control center, as a means to streamline their information management even further.

  “The crucial point is, no matter whether it’s internal or external to the company, no employees other than those assigned exclusively to the control center has anything whatsoever to do with information related to the incident,” Kotani said. The preventative measures were detailed indeed; he spoke about ensuring that those involved in the police investigation enter and leave from the underground parking lot and go straight to the control center, and that all communications and instructions between the control center and the board be conducted verbally and not on paper.

  Kotani had not been informed about the particulars of the situation, so he was merely generalizing, but even so, the specific measures were based on the assumptions that the company faced certain circumstances that could not be made public and that the criminals would later make a monetary demand.

  In closing, Kotani said, “How you maintain your relationship with the police will become an important issue as the situation progresses. It’s vital to ensure that all questioning of your employees by the investigators be channeled through the control center so that your company is always aware of the flow of information. As a basic rule, I advise you to respond prudently, with the assumption that anything you share with investigators will leak out, one way or another.” Thus he ended his report, which took less than ten minutes and did not elicit a peep from the board.

  After Kotani left the room and the door had been locked again, someone quipped, “We’re going to let that guy negotiate with the criminals?” but no one responded and the meeting proceeded to the report by Ide, the manager of general affairs.

  Ide first explained what, going forward from this morning, the response had been within and outside of the company, and emphasized that there had been no notable inquiries from their clients or industry peers that required their collective attention. Internally, during the morning division heads’ meeting, Ide had arranged for all employees to be given a script on how to respond whenever a customer might bring up the incident, and the procedure was already in place by that afternoon. He also reported that one of their employees had been stopped on the street in front of their Osaka branch office that morning by a television crew from a commercial broadcasting company and he had ended up talking to them. The head of the branch immediately called the main office about this occurrence, reporting that said employee had been given a stern warning.

  Next, Hiroshi Sakakibara, the corporate secretary and executive director of general affairs, read aloud the list of documents he had submitted in compliance with the police’s request: first was the set of materials distributed at the current term’s board meeting; organizational charts and allocation of duties for every department and division in the main office as well as every factory, branch office, store, and sales office; issues of their quarterly in-house newsletter, Hinode, from last year going back to 1955; the two-volume History of Hinode Beer, compiled to commemorate their centennial; a register of retired employees from last year going back to 1965, and the employee directory for the current year; and finally a list of all their distributors and suppliers.

  There was another list of documents, those they had refused to submit to the authorities: minutes from board meetings; daily logs of executives and the president; employee performance evaluations; a list of callers to the general affairs department and records of faxes sent and received, going back to January of this year; the contents of company insurance policies and a list of insurance companies; a set of their current and past ledgers.

  Next Kayama, the manager of public relations, announced that their deputy manager had been assigned to the control center. But since the various media companies were so aggressive in their pursuit, and an ambiguous response might harm the company’s image, he suggested that instead it would be better to refuse all interviews. To this, Tazawa—the managing director in charge of public affairs—immediately reprimanded him, “What do you think you’re saying? Consider first whether you assigned the right person to deal with the media. Then we’ll discuss this. That’s enough from you.”

  Following Tazawa’s rebuke, a chorus of impatient voices rose from the group, urging that they move on from the reports and proceed to the main subject. Shirai signaled with his eyes and the two managers, Ide and Kayama, quickly left the room. Once the door was sealed off for a third time, only the fifteen board members remained in the conference room.

  Shiroyama sat at the head of the oval table, flanked by Shirai and Kurata. The rest of the seating had not been arranged in any particular order, but split naturally into those who aligned with Shirai on one side and those who aligned with Kurata on the other, representing the two opposing factions, as they were. Normally before a meeting Shiroyama would survey those to his left and right, meeting each man’s gaze and ascertaining his expression, but now five of the executives on Kurata’s side—including Takeo Sugihara beside him—avoided looking at Shiroyama, while the rest of them were bleary and red-eyed from lack of sleep or appeared in a state of utter bafflement. He had expected this, but clearly any sense of relief about the safe return of the president of the company had already dissipated within the span of half a day.

  “I have caused so much worry to you all. It is shameful to have been kidnapped from the front door of my own home, and I’d like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to you all,” Shiroyama said, opening his address to the group with a few simple words of regret. Next came the task of dispelling any suspicions. “I’m concerned that speculations may be rife, both inside and outside the company. However, I say this to you as the victim of the crime itself, the identity of the criminals remains a complete mystery. And as I told the police, for the duration of the time when I was under confinement they barely said a word to me, nor did they voice any grievances toward our company or mention specific troubles. The only thing they spoke of was their demand for money.”

  Taking up from Shiroyama’s statement, as previously arranged, Shirai began posing questions, acting as a representative of the executives on the board.

  “Does that mean the criminals didn’t say anything about extortionists?”

  “Nothing whatsoever.”

  “In 1990, during employee entrance exams, the company received slanderous letters and a recorded tape from the father of a student who claimed his son had been discriminated against—nothing of that nature was mentioned either?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  As a buzz arose from the executives, now it was Kurata’s turn to quickly add his part. “I’ll give some context for those of you who may not know what transpired. The father of the student came from a segregated buraku community, and it’s true that he sent letters and a tape as described to our human resources department. The human resources manager at the time consulted and reviewed the matter with Shirai-san and myself, and we determined that the defamation was extreme enough to be reported to the police. But the student in question died in a car accident, and then his father suffered a nervous breakdown and committed suicide, so the investigation ended there. There was never any fault with our company, but I’d like all of you to be aware that such an incident did occur.”

  With one among their doubts and fears having thus been swiftly contained by Kurata and Shirai, for the time being no objections were raised by the members gathered around the oval table.

  “Now, I’ll proceed to the main issue. After careful consideration, I decided not to give an exact account to the police. The amount that the crime group has demanded is two billion.”

  All eyes except for those of Shirai and Kurata were riveted upon him. It was hard to tell if they were reacting to the sum itself or to the vast difference between it and the six hundred million that had been reported in the evening papers, but there was more despair than surprise conveyed in everyone’s gaze.

&n
bsp; “I told the police six hundred million. That was the sum the criminals instructed me to tell the police was their demand. They also told me they would make contact before Golden Week. It remains unclear why they wanted me to tell the police six hundred million while demanding two billion, but after much thought I decided to do as I was told. I based this decision upon the fact that I didn’t feel as though the criminals were joking around, and because they said they were holding the beer hostage. I did not mention this to the police.”

  The second shockwave rippled around the oval table exactly as Shiroyama had expected. This time, the sounds didn’t quite form words but rather groans and grumbles that rose to quite a cacophony.

  “Does that mean if we don’t bend to their demand, they’ll poison our beer or something?” asked one of the executives.

  “All the criminals said was that the beer is the hostage, but personally I feel it would be wise to assume a variety of possible scenarios.”

  “Pardon me, but is that seriously what you’re saying? Has the beer really been taken hostage? Did you agree to their demand? Did you negotiate with them—?”

  “I have not consented to their demand nor made any negotiations with them. My mouth was taped shut so I was unable to make any kind of response to them.” Shiroyama spoke these words with a sense of disillusionment as he regarded each look of mistrust, consternation, and anxiety that was directed toward him, calmly distinguishing among them which eyes were constrained by personal feelings, which by a lack of patience, and which by the nascent urge for self-preservation. Many men, many minds—the temperaments of the board members were as varied as their number, and they each had their own timetable for negotiating tactics.