"At a price, yes. But a modest one really." He smiled again, then buzzed for his driver to start the car. "Let me put it like this. If you choose to proceed with me in the next step of Dai Nippon's program, I will arrange for everything you have seen today to be my gift to America. All I ask from you both is complete cooperation in the days ahead. Together we can forge an informal alliance between Japan and America that could alter the course of world history. But it must be done in an atmosphere of complete trust."
Tam was astonished. "You'd make this manufacturing technology available to American industry? Why?"
"As part of a quid pro quo, Dr. Richardson. It's quite simple. In return I would expect complete access to the R&D in the firms Dai Nippon has acquired." He stared back through his rimless glasses. "Which, I gather, is a notion you find a trifle unsettling."
You bastard, I thought. You did have my phone tapped. How else could you have known what she was thinking?
She shot me a telling glance. "How does all this fit in with the new MITI guidance we're suddenly getting?"
"That is a separate matter, Dr. Richardson, which we will address in due course. What I am concerned with now is something else entirely—the final step in restoring America to economic health. The first requirement was long-term capital and better management, which Dai Nippon has now begun to provide. The next is technology, a small foretaste of which I have shown you today."
Was this, I wondered, the big picture, the kan we'd been trying to get a handle on?
"What I'm proposing," Noda continued, "is that together we become partners in the creation of a massive Japanese- American consortium. Perhaps we could call it Nipponica."
"Nipponica?" She kept her tone even.
"The name has an interesting ring to it, does it not? As I envision the organization, you would be its American CEO." He paused. "I would chair the board." Then he turned to me. "And you, Mr. Walton, could be invaluable as chief corporate counsel."