The Miko - 02 by Eric Van Lustbader Read Free Book Online Page A

cheaply enough to make this venture profitable in a big way.”
    He laughed. “And I do mean big, Nick. Believe it or not, we’re looking at a net profit of a hundred million dollars within two years.” His eyes were on fire. “You heard me right. One hundred million!”
    Nicholas might have been sleeping when the hands lifted from his muscles. He felt better than he had in years. He heard muffled movement in the room and then Sato’s commanding voice. “Now we shower and dress for business. In fifteen minutes Miss Yoshida will fetch you.” He stood up, a thick, black shadow. Nicholas twisted his head to try to get a good look at him, but all he could discern was that Sato was not tall by American standards. Behind him, the specter of the fourth man stirred and got to his feet. Nicholas shifted his gaze, but Sato’s bulk was between him and the mysterious stranger.
    “Very little business,” the Japanese industrialist was saying now. “Of course you must still be fatigued by your journey and it is, after all, late in the day. But still”—he bowed formally to them both—“it is Monday and the preliminaries cannot wait. Do you agree, Tomkin-san.”
    “Let’s get on with it, by all means.” Even though he was closer to Nicholas, Tomkin’s voice sounded odd and muffled.
    “Excellent,” Sato said shortly. His bullet head nodded. “Until then.”
    When they were alone, Nicholas sat up, the towel draped across his loins. “You’ve been very quiet,” he said into the gloom.
    In the brief pause, the girls shuffled away, rustling like reeds in the wind.
    Tomkin slid off the table. “Just getting a feel for the territory.” He wrapped himself in his large towel. “Sato seemed busy talking to you; I let him. What’s it to me, right? I was thinking about who was with him.”
    “Any ideas?” Nicholas said as they walked through into the shower room.
    Tomkin shook his head. “You know Jap industry. God alone knows how they run things here and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that even He gets confused once in a while.” Tomkin shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Whoever he was, he’s a big one, to be allowed into Sato’s inner sanctum like that.”
    Seiichi Sato’s office was almost entirely Western in aspect—comfortable sofas and chairs grouped around a low black lacquer coffee table with the ubiquitous Sato logo etched into its center, and, farther away toward the sheets of window looking out on Tokyo, a large rosewood and brass desk, low cabinets, all atop deep pile champagne colored carpet. Woodblock prints were on the walls, all, Nicholas saw, from twentieth-century artists.
    Yet as he accompanied Tomkin across the expanse of carpet Nicholas noticed a half-open door beyond which he saw a tokonoma —a traditional niche into which was placed fresh flowers every day in a small, simple arrangement. Above it on the wall was an old scroll with some of its original gilt powder still on it. Nicholas could not read the inscription as the angle was too acute but he knew it would be a Zen saying, written by an ancient master.
    Seiichi Sato came around from behind his desk in quick, confident strides. He was, as Nicholas had gathered, a rather short man though not overly so. Through his Ralph Lauren suit Nicholas could make out the great bulge of muscles across his shoulders and upper arms like a mantle of iron and he thought, The man works out religiously. He searched Sato’s face, pockmarked and rather angular, with slab cheeks that rose high into his eye sockets and a wide, sleek forehead topped by coarse, brushcut hair. There was nothing subtle about the man’s physiognomy. Nor was he a particularly handsome individual, but what his face lacked in beauty and subtlety it more than made up for by the sheer force of its inner drive and strength of will. His spirit was enormously powerful.
    Smiling, Sato held his hand out to each of them in a very American form of greeting. Behind his great looming shoulder