Well, I didn’t have time to worry about that now.
Onada Industries’ UK headquarters was just off Hammersmith Broadway. The building was small, square, and very modern. Inside, everything was square and very modern as well. Most of the employees seemed to be young English men or women with polite, efficient smiles. I sighted one Japanese hurrying down a corridor in the distance.
We were shown up to a conference room. It was sparsely, but expensively furnished in cherry and light oak. The lighting was indirect, reflecting off the glowing white walls. One wall was made of glass, and provided a one-way view of the reception area. From the outside it had seemed to be green and smoky. Rachel and I sat down.
Rachel was looking smart, at least for her. Her jeans were black, not blue, and didn’t have any holes in them. It was probably her best jersey, lambswool, and not nearly as baggy as her others. For once it was possible to see her slender legs and full figure; in fact, it was impossible to miss them. Her hair was tied back from her face, revealing her ears, and slim neck. The dim, indirect lighting of the room made her skin glow in a way that reminded me of that evening in her flat in Glenrothes.
My thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the door. Mr Akama entered with Yoshi and the two acolytes.
So, Akama was in town? I wondered if he had made a special trip for this meeting, or if he was just passing through. I smiled to myself. Rachel was right; we were important to Onada.
Akama bowed to me, nodded minutely at Rachel, and sat down. I nodded back. A line of elephants marched from left to right down his tie towards his trousers.
We meandered through some small talk. Mr Akama had not taken any English lessons since we had last met. He was stiff, barely smiling. I doubted he had recovered from the insult of me overruling David’s deal with them. Or perhaps he was embarrassed that I had found out how they had used David as a spy within FairSystems. Mr Akama had a number of reasons not to like me very much. Sitting there, watching me through half-closed eyes, he looked a powerful enemy.
Finally, Yoshi fell silent waiting for me to talk.
I didn’t. I simply passed across the fax we had sent to Sega and Nintendo. I waited a few moments for Yoshi to whisper to Akama, and then flicked across Nintendo’s reply.
It did the trick. Mr Akama reddened, and rattled sharply to Yoshi. Yoshi turned to me.
‘Mr Akama is most upset that you have chosen to treat your business partners in this way. He says that you must know that Onada and Nintendo are business rivals, and it is most insulting for you to betray our trust.’
I laughed. ‘Tell Mr Akama that I’m upset that he’s done a deal with my marketing director to betray me.’
Yoshi paused for a moment and then passed on the message to Akama, who had regained his composure, and simply left his eyes resting, impassive again, on my face.
‘I have a proposal,’ I said, clearing my throat. ‘We will make FairSim 1 available to Onada Industries on a non-exclusive basis, but we will not reveal the complete source code. We will make our people available wherever necessary to adapt Onada applications to FairSim 1. We will do this at industry rates, but we will require an advance payment of two hundred thousand dollars against this programming time.’
‘We have no interest in this arrangement,’ said Yoshi with impatience. ‘We thought you were here to discuss the sale of your company.’
‘Well, I’m not.’
Yoshi thought for a moment. ‘Why should we go along with your proposal? We would want exclusive use of FairSim 1, at least in the entertainment sector. Why should we pay you anything when others can use the same system?’
I would have to tell them more. I had expected it. I hoped Jenson wouldn’t find out. I would just have to trust in the Japanese obsession with secrecy.
‘What I’m about to tell you must be in strictest confidence, OK?’
‘Sure,’ said Yoshi. I thought Akama’s head moved in a slight nod, but I couldn’t be certain.
‘FairSystems is about to produce FairSim 2, which will be considerably more powerful than the current version. But, more importantly, we have developed a totally new graphics system for it to run on. This will allow computers to perform VR calculations much faster than ever before. We hope that this will become the industry standard. It will be available to everyone, including Onada Industries.’
‘Then why should we pay you anything in advance for it?’
‘You won’t be paying for the system itself, but for the programming expertise. Our people understand this system better than anyone. They will be able to adapt your applications programs much faster, and to a higher standard, than any of your rivals. Within six months, you’ll have the most efficient virtual reality programming in the world. Of course what you do with it is up to you.’
Yoshi was listening. He understood exactly what I was saying. So, I was sure, did Mr Akama.
He frowned. ‘What is to stop Nintendo or Sega from coming to a similar arrangement with you?’
I had thought of that. ‘Good point. We would be happy to provide our programming expertise on an exclusive basis for entertainment applications for a six-month period.’
‘Six months? That’s nothing!’
‘It’s long enough for you to build up a worldwide lead. It’s also long enough for your people to pick our people’s brains. Think, Yoshi. Two hundred thousand dollars for world leadership! It’s got to be worth it.’
He thought about it. He turned to Akama, and they talked for five minutes.
Finally, Yoshi breathed deeply through his nose, and said, ‘Thank you for your proposal, Mr Fairfax. We will discuss it in Tokyo and perhaps we will talk more soon.’
‘Ah. I forgot to tell you. I want agreement in principle before I leave this office, or else I’ll talk to Nintendo.’ I was really pushing it, I knew. Expecting a Japanese company to make an instant decision was almost expecting the impossible. But there was only one right answer for them. What I was suggesting fitted right into their strategy, and they could not risk me going to Nintendo.
And we needed the cash quickly.
More debate. ‘We need to call Tokyo,’ said Yoshi.
‘We’ll wait,’ I said.
And we waited. At one, they brought us some sushi for lunch. Yoshi popped in to check we were all right.
‘We’re fine,’ I said. ‘Are you getting anywhere?’
Yoshi sucked through his teeth. ‘It’s very difficult. It’s nine o’clock in the evening in Tokyo now. But we are trying.’
He moved to leave, but I called after him. ‘One moment, Yoshi! There are a couple of things I want to talk to you about.’
He hesitated. I pointed to a chair. ‘Have a seat.’
He thought it over, and decided to sit down. He looked wary. As well he might.
‘Todd Sutherland is your lawyer, isn’t he?’
‘He does some work for us, yes,’ said Yoshi, looking puzzled.
‘Why did you send him to shut up Jonathan Bergey’s father?’
‘Jonathan Bergey?’
‘The boy who died in a motorbike accident after playing on one of our VR machines. And taking LSD.’
Yoshi was silent, thinking.
‘It would have been very bad for the whole VR industry if that story had got out,’ he said eventually. ‘Especially for VR entertainment. In fact, the link with LSD and VR could have been just as bad as the accident itself. You know how important the VR entertainment market is to Onada Industries. We couldn’t allow a public lawsuit.’
‘How did you find out about the accident?’
Yoshi shrugged.
‘David told you?’
Yoshi just shrugged again.
It sounded plausible. Yoshi stood up to go.
‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘Look at this.’ I pushed across the photograph Keith had taken of Yoshi in FairSystems’ car park. He picked it up and frowned.
‘I showed this to Jim Robertson, the landlord of the Inch Tavern in Kirkhaven.
He told me that he recognised you as the man who was having a drink with Richard the night before he died. The man who checked in to the Robbers’ Arms as Hiro Suzuki.’
Yoshi’s frown deepened.
‘Why were you there, Yoshi?’
‘I don’t have to answer your questions.’
‘But if you have nothing to hide, why don’t you?’
Yoshi stared at the picture in silence.
‘Perhaps I should ask Mr Akama what you were doing there?’
Yoshi sighed. ‘OK. I’ll tell you.’ He paused for a few seconds. Collecting his thoughts? Or making something up?
‘I came up to Scotland to play golf that weekend. Richard had recommended Kirkhaven as a good place to stay. While I was there, I called him to ask him out for a drink. It was purely social. He and I got on quite well.’
Suddenly I remembered that drink with Richard and Greg in the Windsor Castle. Richard had mentioned that he had spent the day trying to negotiate with a Japanese company. I thought he had said that they were tough, but he quite liked the man he was negotiating with. That must have been Yoshi.
‘You didn’t discuss business at all?’
‘No,’ said Yoshi. ‘Obviously, I was anxious for Richard to change his mind about doing a deal with us. But we didn’t discuss that directly. I just wanted to develop my relationship with him.’
‘That’s funny. The locals said that you had an argument with him, and he stormed out.’
Yoshi thought for a second. ‘Perhaps he was in a bad mood.’
‘And was he in this bad mood because he knew that David Baker was your mole in FairSystems?’
Yoshi shook his head. ‘I can‘t speculate as to why he was in a bad mood. I just don’t know.’
Like hell he didn’t. But there was still something that interested me. ‘Why didn’t you want me to mention this meeting to Mr Akama?’
Suddenly Yoshi looked very uncomfortable. ‘He doesn’t know about it. I would be very grateful if you didn’t mention it.’
He had answered most of my questions, so I owed it to him to keep quiet. ‘OK. But I might have to pass this on to the police.’
Yoshi’s discomfort rose. ‘You don’t have to do that do you? As I said, it was all perfectly innocent.’
‘We’ll see.’ I had got him where I wanted him. Insecure.
‘Well, if you do talk to them, please ask them to be discreet.’
I didn’t answer and he left the room.
‘What do you think?’ I asked Rachel.
‘I don’t know. I think he’s telling the truth.’
‘Mm. But I’m not sure he’s telling the whole truth. He’s hiding something.’
We waited there all afternoon, and ordered a pizza for supper. I was happy to wait. I could tell Onada weren’t stalling, they wanted to take a decision.
The time wore on. Rachel’s imagination was fired by her discussion with Steve that morning, and she questioned me about the markets and how they worked. She was very quick to understand what I was talking about, and I enjoyed explaining it to her. She obviously found finance more interesting than she had expected. When I suggested this to her, she denied it, muttering something about how the City was a parasite on British innovation. Perhaps she was right.
Finally, at eleven o’clock in the evening, or seven o’clock in the Japanese morning, Yoshi came back in the room, looking tired.
He held in his hand a one-page letter, signed by Mr Akama, agreeing in principle to the terms I had demanded. I shook his hand and smiled. ‘It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Yoshi,’ I said, only half-ironically, and Rachel and I left the building.
I was elated as we walked out on to the streets, and so was Rachel. It felt good finally to outwit one of the many predators who had been circling us for the last month. And it was a great deal for FairSystems. Not only would we get the two hundred thousand dollars just when we needed it, but we could secure software sales into a market in which we had previously done nothing.
A good result, and well worth the waiting.
‘What now?’ asked Rachel. It was twenty past eleven. We had intended to go back to Edinburgh that evening, but it was now too late.
‘There’s a hotel round the corner,’ I said. ‘We can try that for you.’
We walked a hundred yards to the huge concrete Novotel I had spotted on the way to Onada that morning. It was full.
We could have spent all night trying to find Rachel a hotel. ‘Come back to my place,’ I said. ‘I have a guest room. You can sleep there.’
Rachel raised her eyebrows. ‘What will Lady Karen think?’
I blushed. ‘She should be asleep when we get there. But if you meet her in the morning, just be polite will you?’
‘I’ll try,’ Rachel smiled. ‘Let’s go.’
So we hailed a cab, and headed for home. To my surprise, I rather enjoyed returning home in a cab with her, rather than Karen. I did feel more relaxed and comfortable with her around. With Karen I was always on edge for some reason or other. Something was always wrong, a problem between us was just dying down, or a new one was looming on the horizon.
And I still couldn’t believe she had let me down at the EGM.
We spilled out of the taxi, and I unlocked the front door. It was almost midnight. I hoped Karen would be in bed. I’d have to wake her up of course, but I hoped I could leave her encounter with Rachel till the morning. We climbed the stairs to the first floor, and I showed Rachel the guest room. She stopped, and listened. I listened too.
I could hear music, very low, coming from the sitting room upstairs. It was the music from Twin Peaks, one of Karen’s favourite CDs.
Damn, I thought. She was still up. It didn’t sound as though she’d heard us.
Rachel crept into her room, and closed the door behind her. She was quite happy to avoid Karen. I decided to wait a few minutes before going upstairs to talk to Karen so as to give Rachel time to get into bed and out of the way.
I went into our bedroom. It was a bit of a mess, which was odd. Karen usually liked to keep things very tidy. The bed was unmade, and some of her clothes were sprawled about the place. Maybe she just tidied up for me, and left to herself was a slob. A nice thought, but unlikely.
I hung up my suit jacket in the wardrobe. I wasn’t looking forward to talking to Karen. I hadn’t had a chance to confront her face to face about her vote at the EGM, and after midnight was not the best time to do it.
I picked up some of her clothes on the floor, and put them on a chair. A skirt, a bra, a blouse.
A wine glass caught my eye. And another.
Two wine glasses!
I stood up, looking at the scene around me in revulsion.
A rush of anger flowed through me. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth. Then I turned, and ran up the stairs.
I threw open the door of the sitting room. Karen looked up in surprise. She was sitting in the armchair, wearing nothing but a dressing-gown. She had a full glass of wine in front of her. My eyes raced round the room. Whoever he was wasn’t there.
‘Poured yourself a new glass, did you?’
She was speechless. Her face went white.
I took a couple of steps towards her. ‘Karen. Why are there two used wine glasses in our bedroom?’ I asked quietly.
She stood up. Our eyes met. She composed herself in front of me. Her face clenched up, her brow furrowed, her lips became a short thin line. She stared back at me, defiantly.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s gone.’
‘Did you . . .?’
Karen smiled.
‘I can’t believe it! How could you? In my house!’
‘With you likely to ring up any time of day or night, we had to.’
‘You mean when I called you from Scotland he was here? With you?’
‘Sometimes,’ she nodded.
There was no sign of shame. She knew she was caught, and she was admitting it, challenging me to accuse her.
She didn’t answer. Her eyes held mine, defying me.
‘Get out,’ I whispered.
‘Mark,’ she said. ‘I love him. I always loved him. I always will love him.’
‘Get out!’ I shouted, and pointed to the door.
She was gone, passing a white-faced Rachel at the head of the stairs.
I collapsed into the armchair. It smelled of Karen’s perfume. I kicked it with my heel, and moved over to the big windows.
I should have known. I should have seen it coming. No wonder she had seemed strange recently. Of course she hadn’t really wanted to see much of me when she could have been seeing him. I thought of how distant she had seemed when we were making love. I bet she was different with him. How could she do it? How could she string me along like that?
Now I thought about it, I had been strung along from the very beginning. ‘I always loved him.’ Those were her words, thrown in my face, and they were true. I knew she used to love this jerk, but I thought she hated him now. And I had hoped over time she would grow to love me. What a fool!
I felt a nudge on my shoulder. Rachel handed me a tumbler of neat whisky. She was holding a glass of red wine in her own hand. I took the whisky, unable even to acknowledge it, and drained it, handing the empty tumbler to Rachel. She brought it back a moment later.
She sat in a small upright chair in the corner, bottle of wine next to her, and watched me. I was suddenly very aware of her presence, but I couldn’t talk to her. I sat down in my own chair, leaned forward, and stared at the rug.
Who the hell was this guy, anyway? What did I know about him? He was an older man. He had known Karen for several years.
Bob Forrester! Maybe. Hadn’t that jerk Jack Tenko said that he had the hots for Karen? She’d been sucking up to him like crazy this last couple of months. How come I hadn’t seen it? And I had spoken to him myself, just a few hours before!
But if it was him, why was he so keen for me to return to London?
My brain functioned incoherently for a long time. The first flush of anger was dulled, but still there. My mind darted rapidly from scene to scene with Karen: dinners we had been to together, watching her flirt with a customer on the phone, seeing her face glowing in the Inch Tavern. All these images that I had held so fondly now were black-edged.
Trading Reality Page 33
