"Tam, let's see if this place has a bar. I need a drink."
"Double." She was carrying the small overnight bag Noda's New York staff had handed her as we left. I had one too, just a shirt and essentials.
The hotel saloon was modernistic, vinyl, and leaned heavily toward Japanese beer and Suntory whiskey. By now some middle-level executives were getting off work at the labs and dropping in to start their usual evening round of drinking, but at this early hour it was still sparsely occupied.
We headed for a comer table and ordered a couple of draft Kirin. After the beers arrived, we got down to brass tacks.
What the hell was Noda's real agenda?
Two heads, so the saying goes, are better than one. I don't know, could be they're worse. Because as Tam and I sat there, Noda's offer to head up some kind of new world consortium dangling before us, what our two heads came up with was the scariest thing that'd ever crossed my path.
Maybe it was the thought of America's working stiffs, whose jobs Noda supposedly was so determined to save. Trouble was, I didn't buy that in the slightest anymore. So what made any sense?
Simple. Why not the most obvious answer of all? Noda wasn't doing this for them. Or for Japan. That wasn't his game. Noda was planning this grand design for Noda.
"Tam." I sipped at my beer. "Did you believe a word of what he said?"
"Of course not. At least not the United Nations speech. It's pure hogwash."