"We've 'moved the shadow.'" I spoke the words to myself hesitantly,
maybe even a little apprehensively. That was the name for a famous
strategy of the seventeenth-century swordsman Miyamoto Mushashi, using
a feint to lure your opponent into prematurely disclosing his battle
plan.
The way I saw it, Matsuo Noda now stood revealed. It had all been a
setup. The financial scam, the help-American-industry cover, the MITI
"guidance." This was a takeover, all the way. A global takeover. What
else could it be?
And the only people on this side of the Pacific who knew were Matt
Walton and Tam Richardson.
For some reason that thought brought to mind the professor at Stanford,
the AI guy who'd disappeared. What was it Tam had said? He'd had dinner
at her apartment? Asked her to do something for him in Japan? And her
MITI friend, whose name was all over that stack of memos on the table
downstairs? Asano. Where did he fit in?
One thing, he'd helped Noda recruit her. They'd worked together, and
their play had been flawless.
But now our friend Matsuo Noda had a small headache. Tam Richardson and
Matt Walton had exposed the underside of his game. The shadow had
moved. Which meant it would only be a matter of time before he struck.
Where was our weakness, hers and mine? What would cause us to lose our
rhythm, to blunder? He'd already outmaneuvered Jack O'Donnell with
ease. He had a master swordsman's unerring instinct for his opponent's
weakness. So where was mine? I had to know it before he found it.