"Hai, wakarimasu." He understood that Noda-sama surely had written this, but so what? It wasn't the official form that the rules specified. More muzukashii.
Noda-san was in a rush, I apologized again. Didn't have time to locate the regular form. Tam passed that along in better Japanese.
"Soo desu . . ." Yamada thoughtfully agreed that such oversights sometimes happened. Everybody knew the big daimyo had a tendency to override official channels. He shifted his Uzi uncertainly.
"Noda-sama insisted I finish this report by Monday," Tam stressed. "We should only be a minute."
Yamada scrutinized the back of the card a moment longer, holding it up to the light. What was he going to do?
Finally he handed it back, bowed reluctantly, and looked the other way. It was a go.
"God, that was close." Tam closed the door behind us and clicked on the lights. "You don't know how lucky we were. If Morikawa had been on duty tonight, forget it. He'd never have bought that cock-and-bull routine."
About a dozen computer workstations had been installed
on twelve to link up with the mainframe and data center on eleven. As we moved quickly past the sleeping screens, blind eyes staring vacantly into space, there was an eerie, ghostlike abandonment to the place, all the more so because of its hectic motion during regular hours. The phantoms of regimented analysts seemed to haunt the rows of empty desks. Tam remarked she'd never seen it like this: the nerve center off duty. Only the storm of the decade, together with two A.M. Sunday morning, could create such solitude. It took God to shut down Dai Nippon.
"Okay, time to move fast. Let's hit Mori's lair." I was whispering as we neared the corner office. Ahead was the closed door, solid oak. I took a deep breath and reached for the knob.