Fishing for Stars (51 page)

The multiple courses began to arrive, all of them simply different ways of serving the potentially poisonous fish
.
With the first,
Konoe-san
asked, ‘Do you know this fish? It is called
fugu
.’

‘Puffer fish,’ I replied. ‘In the islands it is known to contain a deadly poison. Is it the same fish?’ I replied, knowing of course that it was.

Anna looked down at the serving in front of her and then at me, her expression perplexed, chopsticks poised hesitantly.

‘It is the same here; one mouthful can kill you,’
Konoe-san
grinned.

Anna put down her chopsticks and looked in turn at each of us. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

Konoe Akira seemed genuinely amused. ‘It is the reason I brought you here,’ he explained, his eyes suddenly alight.

‘What? To poison us?’ Anna asked tentatively, then as quickly realised that this couldn’t be true or he would have let her partake of the poisoned fish before alerting her. ‘It’s a joke? A dare?’ she suggested with a second questioning smile.

‘No, it is a symbolic gesture I wish to make.’ Noticing Anna’s cast-aside chopsticks he indicated her plate. ‘Please eat. It is quite safe. It has been thirty years since anyone perished in this restaurant.’ Then resuming he said, ‘A symbolic gesture of loyalty, friendship and mutual benefit.’

It’s a bit early for that, mate
, I thought to myself.
You’ve single-handedly fucked up Anna’s life and indirectly much of my own. Friendship? Ha! You can kiss my arse!
But I was here at Anna’s behest and told myself this wasn’t an appropriate time to be deliberately recalcitrant or even churlish. On the other hand I certainly wasn’t going to go out of my way to be charming.
Fuck him!
I’ll play my part, no more.
Knowing the chances of being poisoned by eating
fugu
were pretty bloody slim I picked up my chopsticks and tasted the fish while waiting for Konoe Akira to continue.

‘Please, if you will indulge an old man, perhaps I may explain?’ Konoe Akira indicated to the hovering waiter to fill my sake
cup yet again and then his own, continuing to talk while the waiter completed the task. ‘When I was a young man at the Tokyo Military Academy,’ he began, ‘at the end of every month I, together with six of my closest friends, fellow trainee officers, would go to a cooking school close to the academy where they trained the young
fugu
apprentices.’ He lifted his sake cup and waited for me to do the same. We downed the contents and the waiter immediately refilled the cups as Konoe Akira continued. ‘We would each select a first-year apprentice and have him prepare a particular
fugu
dish for each of us. Then our personally chosen apprentice, who would remain our choice until we graduated one year and seven months later, would bring in his dish and place it in front of whoever had selected him, so that seven variations of
fugu
arrived at the same time. As you see on your plate, each
fugu
variation is divided into seven pieces and arranged in the shape of a chrysanthemum in honour of our emperor and the chrysanthemum throne. Each of us would then keep one section of our fish and the other six would be placed on the plates of each of my six comrades who would do the same until we each had a chrysanthemum consisting of seven different variations of
fugu
fish, a portion of everyone’s chosen dish on our plates.’

‘The opposite to Russian roulette!’ I smiled, the sake beginning to work its magic.

‘Exactly! If one of us died, we all died.’

‘Oh my God!’ Anna exclaimed, then, regaining her composure said, ‘Why are boys so stupid?’

‘Well, I guess none of you died or you wouldn’t be here,
Konoe-san
,’ I said, unimpressed.

Konoe Akira chuckled, acknowledging my point, then said, ‘I imagine the supervising chef watched the apprentices very, very closely.’ He smiled wryly. ‘To lose seven young officer recruits from noble families would most assuredly have closed down the cooking school. Food is important in Japan, but the military at that time was paramount. Notwithstanding all that, having survived and believing we’d undergone a critical test of courage, we felt like heroes in the tradition of the Samurai.’

‘Like the three musketeers, one for all and all for one,’ I quoted in my newly acquired sake
-
charged voice. By this time we’d downed our sixth sake and our third portion of the world’s dullest-tasting fish.

‘Exactly,’ Konoe Akira said and, without turning to face the waiter who stood no more than three feet away, commanded in a loud voice, ‘Waiter! More sake! At once!’ I was comforted by the thought that the rice wine was getting to him as well.

We waited for him to continue, but while we were being subjected to another round he seemed to have temporarily lost his train of thought. Hardly surprising. It was probably insanity for him to drink the day after leaving hospital after an angina attack, another example of foolish masculine derring-do.

‘You were saying, you brought us to a
fugu
restaurant as a symbol?’ Anna prompted.

‘Yes, that’s right, of loyalty and friendship,’ he said, suddenly recollecting himself. ‘It is what I hoped might develop between the three of us today.’

Anna, grabbing the opportunity, now said, ‘We, you and I, discussed a business proposition while Nicholas was away,
Konoe-san
. Perhaps you might care to outline its main features to
Duncan-san
?’

Konoe-san
turned to me. ‘I congratulate you,
Duncan-san
. Second Vase . . . er . . . 
Anna-san
has an excellent grasp of business.’

Only in Japan would a man be congratulated for his female partner’s business prowess or intelligence. ‘Her grasp of business is well beyond my own,’ I replied.

Konoe Akira looked at me as if I were being deliberately modest. ‘
Anna-san
tells me you have a shipping line in the South Seas?’

‘Yes, the South Pacific.’

‘But that is a very significant business achievement,
Duncan-san
,’ he said. ‘I think you are being too humble.’

Don’t patronise me, you bastard!
The sake was overcoming my willingness to restrain myself and I had to make a real effort. ‘We are small. Anna calls it “Boys playing with boats”. She is a remarkable businesswoman; I am not in her class.’ I grinned, then somewhat ambiguously said, ‘You are fortunate she is in charge. If you were dealing with me you wouldn’t get too far.’

Whether Konoe Akira sensed my hostility I couldn’t say.

‘So! Let me tell you about us,
Duncan-san
. We are in fishing. It has been a family concern for five hundred years, but of course, now we are a
zaibatsu,
a group. After Mitsubishi, we are the second largest fleet in Japan. We have eighty deep-sea fishing boats, and many smaller ones that operate in the shallow waters off the Southern Kuril Islands.’

‘But don’t those islands belong to Russia?’ I asked.

Konoe Akira sighed. ‘They belong to Japan, but were stolen by Russia at the end of the war.’

‘And you still fish their waters?’

‘It is by arrangement.’

‘With the Russian government?’

‘It is an arrangement,’ Konoe Akira persisted. ‘Water must find its own way from the mountains to the sea.’

‘Japanese proverb?’

‘No, commonsense. Sometimes arrangements work better than treaties. Governments must consider lots of extraneous factors. Wisely they sometimes allow things to take a natural course.’ He paused, looking directly at me. ‘Now that many of the Pacific Islands are becoming independent, we would like to make a contribution to their future welfare,
Duncan-san
.’

‘Contribution?’ I knew what was coming but wasn’t willing to acknowledge it too readily. ‘That can be done through your government as foreign aid without the river having to change its course.’

‘Yes . . . that is
also
possible,’ he said, hesitating slightly. ‘As chairman of my
zaibatsu
I am honoured to sit on various government boards that control the fishing industry and am not without influence in matters of foreign aid.’ He called for another round of sake. ‘But what I am suggesting is perhaps something more direct, like the Southern Kuril Islands.’

I had forced him to come out into the open and say it. ‘What form would this contribution take?’ I asked.

‘
Konoe-san
is suggesting a joint venture,’ Anna interjected quickly.

Despite myself, I laughed. ‘We have eight freighters,’ then remembering the two we’d just purchased from Mitsubishi I amended it, ‘ten . . . ten freighters. They are all used for cargo and passenger transport – two are mainland vessels, strictly cargo, most are pretty old and none are equipped for deep-sea fishing . . . any kind of fishing for that matter.’

‘
Konoe-san
’s
zaibatsu
is interested in establishing three tuna-processing plants,’ Anna continued. ‘The South Pacific is the next big fishing opportunity – tuna and shark fins. They won’t require your freighters. Understand, Nicholas, this is an entirely new joint venture. They want the sole licence to fish within the coastal areas of each of the island nations.’

‘But we know nothing about processing fish.’

‘You knew nothing about scrap metal, or running an inter-island shipping fleet either.’

‘Yeah, true, but we were a lot younger then. I’m not sure we’d be comfortable —’

‘Comfortable? Business is seldom comfortable unless you possess a monopoly.’ Anna flicked her hair back in a gesture of impatience. ‘Don’t you see, Nicholas, that’s virtually what this would be, a three-way agreement:
Konoe-san
’s
zaibatsu
, the island government concerned and yourselves. You wouldn’t have to know anything about processing fish;
Konoe-san
’s people will do that. They will run the fish factories – I mean, processing plants.’

‘And we’d do what?’

‘Build the infrastructure, the port facilities, and operate them, run the local labour force, the things Joe Popkin does on his ear, and your job would be to liaise with the government, be responsible for labour relations, keep in touch with both sides on the ground.’

‘And all this will result in a profit for the three of us?’

‘Of course. If
Konoe-san
’s
zaibatsu
has an exclusive fishing licence for the fishing zones it will be very profitable for all concerned.’

‘And I would be the one required to kick open the doors?’

‘Not kick, Nicholas, facilitate,’ Anna said, giving me a reproving look.

‘I know nothing about “facilitating”, as you so nicely put it, Anna. We’ve always been upfront, what you see is what you get,’ I replied pompously.

‘Don’t be ridiculous! You do it all the time. Isn’t that the point? It’s open, it’s honest, they trust you.’

‘I wouldn’t begin to know how to negotiate a deal such as this one.’

‘You wouldn’t have to, I will do the negotiating.’

I looked at her, surprised. ‘But you said you’d never go into business with me . . . with us?’

Anna laughed, obviously amused. ‘Certainly not. I love you too much, Nicholas.’ She turned and smiled at Konoe Akira. ‘I will be the independent go-between, negotiate the licences, agreements, protocol between Japan and the governments of the countries involved. All you will do is open the doors for me, make the necessary introductions. Remember, these are new island governments, still wet behind the ears. They’ll need guidance and expertise. You’ve known all the main players involved since they were schoolboys; you and Joe can help enormously.’

‘To see they don’t get ripped off?’

‘No, Nicholas, nobody gets
ripped off
!
The whole idea is to create a sound business relationship between Japan and the island nations.’

‘I’m not at all sure about this. It sounds like a monopoly, and it seems to me most monopolies end up as greedopolies, taking more than they ever return to any economy. Witness the British Phosphate Commission in Nauru, for instance.’

Konoe Akira suddenly cut in. ‘If all the other fishing
zaibatsu
are allowed in, there will be no control, then soon, no fish.’ He gave an exaggerated hand gesture and then a shrug. ‘We will fish the resources carefully,
Duncan-san
. That way there is always a business for you, for the government and for us.’

I turned to Anna and switched to speaking English. Rude perhaps, but the Japanese do it all the time when they’re negotiating through a translator. ‘I’m a bit pissed,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know, I’m not at all sure we could finance our third of the business. It looks like a bloody big undertaking. I’ll have to speak with Joe and Kevin.’